


These Four Walls

by CNN_Junkie



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Infidelity, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-15 18:59:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2239860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CNN_Junkie/pseuds/CNN_Junkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the only father they've ever known passes away, four grown adopted brothers, bruised and banged up by their respective adult lives, are forced to return to their childhood home and live under the same roof together for a week, along with their over-sharing mother and an assortment of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. Confronting their history and the frayed states of their relationships among the people who know and love them best, they ultimately reconnect in hysterical and emotionally affecting ways amid the chaos, humor, heartache and redemption that only families can provide-driving us insane even as they remind us of our truest, and often best, selves.</p><div class="center">
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    <a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/user/gho4life/media/Title2_zpse5e69c10.jpg.html"></a>
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    <img/>
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  </p>
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            </blockquote>





	1. A Good Place to Start

This morning when Liam’s alarm clock didn’t go off and he completely missed his first class of the day, it should have been a warning that his day was going to be complete shit.  
  
After his second class when he reached his Jeep in the parking lot only to find he had a flat tire and no spare, he should have begged off of his study group and gone home.  
  
Once the study group had finished working on their Sociology project, Liam should have called a cab at the first rumble of thunder instead of opting to try to race the storm home.  
  
He should have left quietly when he finally stepped into his flat just off campus, sopping wet from the torrential down pour and heard moans of pleasure emanating from his and, his girlfriend, Sophia’s bedroom.  
  
But Liam was a glutton for punishment today, so he walks calmly into his bedroom.  Inside he finds his girlfriend of two years bouncing up and down on the naked lap of his sociology professor who is lying against the headboard.  
  
“How long?” he croaks out, unable to tear his eyes away from the scene.  
  
The sound of his voice startles both parties.  His professor sits up too fast, head-butting Sophia with a sickening crack, Sophia in turn rolling sideways off the bed hitting the hardwood floors.  
  
Liam’s professor gathers his belongings and sprints from the flat still very much naked.  
  
Sophia lifts herself to the bed, wrapping a sheet around her naked body, tears, snot, and blood pouring down her face.  
  
“I’m so sorry Li,” she gurgles.  She reaches out for him, but Liam takes a step back.  
  
“How long?” He demands through gritted teeth.  
  
Sophia is silent, regaining some form of composure before she speaks again. “Almost a year.”  
  
“Un-fucking-believable,” he breathes.  
  
It takes Liam a little less than an hour to pack all his essential belongings and call a cab.  
  
“We can fix this, Liam!” She begs, fresh tears wetting the dried blood caked under her nose.  
  
Liam snorts, flips her off, and pulls the front door closed so hard that he hears two pictures fall off the wall and shatter.  
  
He grins at the sound of glass breaking. _Small victories_ , he thinks.  
  
Liam has the cab driver take him to his jeep across campus where he’ll have someone come change his tire. Then he’ll formulate a plan for the foreseeable future.  
  
He’s in his jeep, some old Justin Timberlake buzzing through the speakers, waiting on Angel Recovery to bring him a new tire, when his phone vibrates against his thigh.  
  
The caller ID flashes “BRO 1” across the screen; His oldest brother, River.   Liam sighs, finger hovering just above the ‘ignore’ button.  
  
 _If you ignore him, he’ll just call back ten more times and be twice as pissy every time you don’t take the call._  
  
Sighing again, Liam accepts the call. “Now’s not really a good time.”  
  
“Well hello to you too, college boy!  Now tell me, dear brother, what’s crawled up your ass today?”  
  
“It’s really not a good time, Riv. Can I call you later?”  
  
“What happened?” River’s voice is tender, well, as tender as a career cynic’s voice can be. “Talk to me Leeler.”  
  
“Sophia and I broke up.”  
  
“Fuck!”  
  
“I know,” Liam scrubs a hand across his face.  
  
“Li and Sophia broke up,” River is telling someone in a whisper that he thinks Liam can’t hear. “Oh fuck off!  Fine, yes you called it, there’s a twenty in my bag, just fucking take it Louis!”  
  
Liam shouldn’t be that shocked that his brothers were placing bets on when his relationship with Sophia would end.  They were never really that fond of her.  
  
 _‘She freaks me out, Li. She never looks directly at anyone, always off into the distance just past your head.  It’s like she’s communing with spirits or something.’_ He remembers River telling him over dinner one night.  
  
 _‘Bit of a dressage horse, that one! Walks like a thoroughbred.’_ His older brother, Louis, had mentioned in passing the first Thanksgiving Liam brought her home.  
  
 _‘Now don’t you listen to them, love. I think it’s just fine that you fancy a girl who can eat an apple through a picket fence.’_ Their mother.  
  
 _‘Did you used to be a man?’_ Harry, the baby of the family, flat out asked never one to use anything resembling tact.  
  
“Leeyum! Are you there?” River’s voice pulls Liam out of his memories.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”  
  
“Now this is very important, for the sake of my bank balance. Did you dump her or was she fucking somebody else?”  
  
There’s a small scuffle on the other end of the call.  Liam can hear his mother’s voice.  
  
“Just give me the bloody phone or I’ll return you to that American crack house where we found you!”  
  
There’s a gasp and the struggle for the phone stops.  
  
“Liam, dear, it’s mummy.”  
  
“I gathered, mum,” he laughs.  
  
“I’m sorry to hear about Sophia, my darling boy.  She is a horse toothed trollop and you deserve so much better.”  
  
“Thanks mum.”  
  
“Now I have some rather devastating news,” He can hear his mother try to hide the quiver in her voice.  “Your Papa is no longer with us.”  
  
Liam gapes at the phone when the tow truck pulls up.  “Mum, I’ll… Uh… Let me call you back in just a bit.  I have to take care of something.”  
  
“Of course, dear.  Take all the time you need.  Crying doesn’t make you a bitch, no matter what Louis tells you.”  
  
An hour later, Liam has a new tire, a dead father, and seven messages from Sophia.  He scrolls through his contacts finding River’s number.  
  
“Probably should’ve opened with the Dad is dead thing, huh?” River says upon answering.  
  
“Might’ve been a good idea, yeah. But the fact that you and Louis are together should’ve told me something was up.”  
  
It’s not that River and Louis hated each other, they’re both fiercely protective of the other, they just live on opposite ends of the spectrum and rarely have much to talk about.  
  
Louis married his secondary school sweetheart, a spunky brunette named Eleanor Calder, who group up in a house two blocks from theirs.  They were each other’s firsts for everything.  
  
After their father had his first stroke, Louis dropped out of university to take care of the record store their father owned.  Liam thinks a part of Louis resents River for not stepping up and taking the reins of the family business, but that was never River’s style.  
  
River, on the other hand, married a Russian fashion photographer named Erik and worked as the VP of Public Relations for some fashion designer Liam had never heard of.  
  
Every Christmas or birthday without fail, River always gifted his brother’s with new, perfectly tailored suits, though Liam was never sure of how his brother got their measurements without ever asking.  
  
“The funeral is on tomorrow at eleven,” River states in that casual, devil may care way that only he can pull off.  It doesn’t strike Liam as the slightest bit silly when he realizes that he still idolizes his older brother.  “Erik’s off in Tanzania or Wisconsin or something, so he’ll be taking the red eye in.”  
  
“Anybody heard from Harry?” Liam doesn’t bother to try to hide the glimmer of hope in his voice.   
  
“No, I’ve called all of his last known numbers and left messages, so really all we can do at this point is hope for the best.”  
  
“He’ll be gutted if he misses the funeral.”  
  
“I heard through the grape vine that he was in America, but none of his usual contacts know how to get a hold of him.”  
  
“Didn’t he sleep with that blonde country singer?  The annoying one?”  
  
“I’m pretty sure that was a rumor, but knowing our baby brother you never can be too sure.”  
  
Liam laughs, really laughs for the first time since the Sophia incident earlier in the day.  
  
“Do you wanna talk about the Sophia thing?” River asks tentatively.  
  
Liam shakes his head like his brother can see him.  “I’m about to drive down.  Wait up for me?”  
  
“Of course, see you in a couple hours.”  
  
Liam disconnects the call and starts his jeep.  There are tears pricking at the corner of his eyes.  Tears he didn’t know he was holding in.  As he drives he cries over the end of his relationship with Sophia, but more for the death of the only father he ever knew.


	2. Day 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/gho4life/media/Day1_zps2eed3fab.jpg.html)

Liam isn’t sure when he stopped crying or when he pulled into the driveway of his childhood home, but here was dry-eyed and slightly terrified of what tomorrow held.  
  
He sits in his jeep looking fondly at the house he grew up in.  Before his father had his first stroke, the man spent every spare minute away from the record store doing repairs on the house.  
  
Since that stroke, the “Kinlan Estate” has fallen into a minor state of disrepair.  Weeds have started to sprout between the paving stones, there are bits of water staining under the gutters, and one of the shutters by what used to be Harry’s bedroom window is hanging away from the house.  
  
Simon Kinlan was nothing else if not a proud man and Liam has no doubt that even after he was crippled by a stroke, his pride refused to allow his wife, their mother, to hire someone to take care of the house repairs.  
  
Stepping from the jeep, Liam breathes in the cool evening air, allowing the familiar smell of pine and creek water to make him think he’s sixteen again.  
  
A low whistle rings out in the night.  It’s all too familiar and Liam looks up to the roof of the house, a knowing grin on his face.  
  
Perched on top of the house is River, face illuminated from the glow coming out an open window to his right and every so often when he takes a drag from his cigarette.  
  
It’s a habit River never grew out of.  Their parents detested smoking, so when River picked up the habit as an act of rebellion, he also took to sitting on the roof to do so.  Their parents might have never noticed if not for one night when River flicked cigarette, that wasn’t quite completely stubbed out, into the gutter nearly catching the entire house on fire.  
  
“Season’s greetings squirt!” River calls.  
  
Liam rolls his eyes at the nickname.  “I wouldn’t qualify this as the happiest of holidays.”  
  
Liam can see the grin creep across his brother’s face and knows he’s about to walk into the lion’s den.  
  
“Meet me inside and you’ll find out just how wrong you are!”  
  
River flicks the cigarette into the air; it arcs high and lands on the ground, dangerously close to Liam’s shoe.  
  
Liam stubs the butt out with his trainer and dashes into the house.  
  
River is bounding down the stairs when Liam slides into the front hall.  Liam opens his mouth, but River smacks a hand over it and shakes his head.  
  
Liam furrows his brow and looks at his oldest brother questioningly.  
  
River removes his hand from Liam’s mouth.  “First we talk, then we announce the return of the prodigal son.”  
  
“Dad’s dead, the funeral’s tomorrow, what else is there to talk about?”  
  
“It gets better.”  
  
“It gets better? Fucking hell, River, do you even hear yourself when you talk?”  
  
“That came out wrong.”  
  
“Oh, you don’t say?”  
  
“He wants us to sit shiva.”  
  
“We’re not even Jewish.”  
  
“Well, this is what he wanted.”  
  
“Dad’s dead.”  
  
River sighs, like its absolutely exhausting having to deal with Liam’s inability to process this new information. “Yeah, well apparently, that’s the only appropriate time to do it.”  
  
“But Dad’s an atheist.”  
  
“Dad _was_ an atheist.”  
  
“The man was confined to a wheelchair for almost two years and you’re telling me he found God before he died?”  
  
“No, I’m telling you he’s dead and you should conjugate your tenses accordingly.”  
  
The two Kinlan men can’t help but sound like a couple of callous assholes, it’s how they were raised.  
  
River throws an arm around Liam’s shoulders. “And I’m telling you, little brother, that for the next seven days, we’re totally and completely fucked.”  
  
“Seven days?”  
  
“That’s how long it takes to sit shiva, according to Google.”  
  
“And everyone is just going along with this? Like does no one else see the train wreck that’s headed for the Kinlan household?”  
  
“It was his dying wish, Li and who are we to argue with the dead?”  
  
“Don’t you get all philosophical on me, Riv; neither of us is stoned enough for that.  What’s Louis saying about this giant clusterfuck?”  
  
“Louis told me.”  
  
“What did he say?”  
  
“He said Pop wants us to sit shiva.”  
  
“Fuck me,” Liam sighs.  
  
  
 **Day 1**  
  
 _11:15 am_  
  
  
There is a flash flood warning in effect for the entire day of the funeral for Simon Kinlan.  
  
True to form, no one has seen or heard from Harry. There are not-so-discrete whispers from not-so-close relatives saying that Harry is rumored to have died alone and penniless somewhere in Canada.  
  
Liam had bitten down on his lip to hide his snicker, River laughed long and out loud at the absurdity before taking a nip from the flask he snuck in his suit jacket, and Louis looked disapprovingly at them both before going to check on their mother.  
  
Next to the gravesite, it’s a disaster of rain, mud, and grass clippings against dress shoes and stocking feet.  One of the pallbearers, an elderly man that Mr. Kinlan had known from his Air Force days, had slipped nearly dropping the casket.  
  
None of the Kinlan men were asked to be pallbearers. “Your father was very specific about his wishes,” their mother had said.  
  
The canvas pop-up tent that has been put up is completely useless in fending off the rain. Louis stands beside his wife, Eleanor, who leans against him to warm him as he cries. River is with Erik, who is replying to emails or playing some game on his mobile, not even feigning interest in the burial. Liam stands beside their mother, whose red eyes are dulled by the Valium River slipped into her tea that morning.  
  
Their mother pats Liam’s hand as the speaker begins the service.  
  
“Don’t hold back,” she says to him out of the corner of her mouth. “There’s no correct emotional response to something like this.”  
  
Charlotte Kinlan fancies herself a psychiatrist, but all five of the men in her life knew that the most of her psychobabble came directly from some American talk-show hosted by a balding redneck with a bogus PhD.  
  
“Today we say good-bye to Simon Kinlan, beloved husband and father, dear brother, and cherished friend.” The speaker’s voice booms even over the clatter of raindrops against the canvas tent.  
  
Liam realizes that he recognizes the man, some friend of Louis’ from back in secondary. He’s not entirely sure of the man’s real name, but he knows that everyone used to call him Woody due to an unfortunate incident involving a substitute teacher and a low-cut blouse.  
  
“Simon was never a big fan of ritual…,” Woody says.

“I’ll be damned,” River says, elbowing Liam in the ribs.  
  
He follows his gaze across the cemetery to the access road, where a black Porsche has noisily pulled up.  
  
There is a man attempting to knot his tie while running across the wet lawn in his rumpled suit pants and obviously second-hand jacket like he’s finishing a marathon. He runs toward where the immediate family is standing, without the slightest hint of convention. He’s wearing moccasins, of all things.  
  
“Harry,” their mother says softly, and signals Woody to stop.  
  
By this point Harry’s given up on the tie, which he leaves hanging unknotted around his neck. He comes running down the lawn and then slides the last few feet, coming to a stop right in front of their mother.  
  
“Mum,” he says, and throws his wet arms around her.  
  
“You came,” she says, overjoyed.  
   
“Of course I came,” he says. He pulls back and looks up at Liam. “Leeler.”  
  
“Hi, Haz.”  
  
Harry grabs Liam’s arm and pulls him into a dramatic hug.  
  
He reaches past Liam to shake hands with Louis, who reciprocates quickly and self-consciously, trying to speed things along and get the funeral back on track. Harry kisses River’s cheek.  
  
“You got fat,” River whispers.

“You got old,” he responds in a stage whisper, loud enough for everyone to hear.  
  
Behind him, Woody clears his throat. Harry turns around and straightens his jacket.  
  
“Sorry, Woody. Please continue.” River hits the back of his head. “Nick! Sorry. Rabbi,” he says quickly, but the chuckles have already rippled through the crowd and Woody looks absolutely murderous.  
  
  
 _1:55 pm_  
  
  
The family reconvenes at the “Kinlan Estate.”  Ironically enough now that the funeral has ended so has the deluge that threatened to wash them away during the funeral services.  
  
Once inside Erik, has decided that now would be an appropriate time to return some business calls and is pacing the hall between the dining room and the living room, loudly arguing the finer points of some photo shoot that will no doubt add to his already grotesque cult following.  
  
He’s wearing a wireless earpiece that makes him look like a psycho ranting to himself. “Naomi will never go for that,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re ready to commit, but the budget is unacceptable.”  
  
Jade, their mother’s dearest friend serves the rest of the family a meal of poached salmon and mashed potatoes.  
  
She circles the table, doling out heaping servings wherever she sees the white of a dish, ducking around Erik, who is still pacing and cursing loudly into his earpiece.  
  
Eleanor helps Jade, because Eleanor is an in-law and technically not one of the bereaved.  
  
Eleanor and Louis have been trying to have a baby for a while now, without much success. She’s taking fertility drugs that cause her to gain weight and hormones that cause her to cry about how fat she is. This according to River, who also informed Liam that when Eleanor thinks she’s ovulating, she stays in bed and makes Louis come home on his lunch breaks.  
  
“Can you imagine?” River said. “Poor Lou has to get it up twice a day for that…?”  
  
“My neck, my back, lick my pussy and my crack!” The rap song blares loudly across the table, and Harry quickly reaches into his shirt pocket and sheepishly pulls out his flashing cell phone.  
  
“I been meaning to change that ringtone,” he says, sliding his thumb across the screen to answer. “Hey… What? No, that’s great! Perfect timing.”  
  
He puts the phone back into his pocket and looks at all of his family meaningfully. “He’s here,” he says, like they’ve all been waiting.  
  
Harry strides out of the dining room and hits the front door running. They all run into the kitchen to peer out the bay window to the street, where a blonde man has just stepped out of the backseat of a dark Lincoln Town Car. The mystery man has no visible tattoos, no obvious faults that can be used against him later.  
  
“Who is that?” their mother asks.  
  
“Maybe his lawyer,” River guesses.  
  
“Harry has a lawyer?” Eleanor says.  
  
“Only when he’s in trouble.”  
  
“Is he in trouble?”  
  
“Odds are.”

By now Harry has reached him. They don’t shake hands or kiss chastely, but attack each other with hungry mouths and sloppy tongues.

“Well, I guess he’s not his lawyer,” Eleanor says, maybe just a tad snidely.  
  
She doesn’t like River. She’s not crazy about any of them, not really. Eleanor comes from a nice family, where they kiss each other hello and good-bye and remember birthdays and anniversaries and call their parents just to say hi.  
  
Having swapped enough spit for the time being, Harry and his mystery guest head up the front walk, and they move away from the window, River, as always, getting in the last word: “It would be so like Harry to be doing his lawyer.”  
  
“This is Niall,” Harry announces proudly, standing at the head of the table, where the family are all once again seated, having scrambled back when Harry finished tonguing and groping Niall and led him up the bluestone path. “My fiancée.”  
  
  
 _3:00 pm_  
  
  
Woody comes by with a few volunteers from the Hebrew Burial Society to deliver the mourning supplies.  
  
They rearrange furniture and set things up with a hushed military precision, after which Woody gathers the four Kinlan siblings in the living room.  
  
Five low folding chairs are lined up in front of the fire replace. The mirror above the mantel has been clouded over with some kind of soapy white spray. The furniture has all been pushed to the perimeter of the room, and thirty or so white plastic catering chairs have been unfolded and placed in three rows facing the five low chairs.  
  
There are two silver collection plates placed on the piano. People paying their respects to the family can make dollar contributions to the burial society or to a local children’s charity. A few lonely bills have been placed on each plate like tips.  
  
In the front hall, a thick candle formed in a tall glass is lit and placed on the table. This is the shiva candle, and there is enough wax in the glass for the candle to burn for seven days.  
  
Harry nudges one of the low chairs with his toe. “It was nice of Yoda to lend us his chairs.”  
  
“They’re shiva chairs,” Woody says. “You sit close to the ground as a sign of mourning. Originally, the bereaved sat on the floor. Over time, the concept has evolved.”  
  
“Still got a ways to go,” Harry grumbles.

“What’s with the mirror?” River wants to know.

“It’s customary to remove or cover all the mirrors in a house of mourning,” Woody says. “We’ve fogged up all the bathroom mirrors as well. This is a time to avoid any and all impulses toward personal vanity and simply reflect on your father’s life. A little while ago, your father called me to the house,” Woody says. “Your father wasn’t a religious man. But toward the end, he regretted the absence of tradition in his life, in the way he raised his children.”

“That doesn’t really sound like Dad,” Liam says.

“It’s actually somewhat common for people facing death to reach out to God,” Boner says, in a self-important tone.  
  
“Dad didn’t believe in God,” Harry says. “Why would he reach out to something he didn’t believe in?”  
  
“I guess he changed his mind,” Woody says, and everyone can tell he’s still pissed at Woody for the earlier nickname slip.

“Dad never changed his mind,” Liam slips in.

“Your father’s dying request was that his family sit shiva to mark his passing.”

“He was on a lot of drugs,” River points out.

“He was perfectly lucid.” Woody’s face is starting to turn red.  
  
“Did anyone else hear him say it?” Harry asks.

“Harry.” Louis enters the conversation if only to admonish his baby brother.

“What? I’m just saying. Maybe Woody—Nick misunderstood.”

“I didn’t misunderstand,” Woody says testily. “We discussed it at length.”

“Don’t some people sit shiva for just three days?” Liam.

“Yes!” River.

“No!” Woody shouts. “The word ‘shiva’ means ‘seven.’ Its seven days. That’s why it’s called shiva. Your father was very specific.”

“Well, I can’t be away from the business for seven days,” Louis says. “Believe you me, Dad would never have gone for that.”

“Listen, Nick,” Liam says, stepping forward. “You’ve delivered the message. You held up your end. We’ll discuss it amongst ourselves now and come to a consensus. We’ll call you if we have any questions.”

“Stop it!”

They all turn to see their mother and Jade standing under the archway to the living room. “This is what your father wanted,” Charlotte says stepping into the room. “He was not a perfect man, and not a perfect father, but he was a good man, and he tried his best. And you all haven’t exactly been model children lately.”

“It’s okay, Mum. Calm down,” Louis says, reaching out for her.

“Stop interrupting me. Your father lay dying in his bed for the last half year or so. How many times did you visit him, any of you? But your father made his last wish known, and we will honor it. All of us. It’s going to be crowded, and uncomfortable, and we’ll all get on each other’s nerves, but for the next seven days, you are all my children again.” She takes a few steps into the room and smiles at us. “And you’re all grounded.”  
  
Charlotte spins on one stiletto heel and plants herself like a child into one of the low seats. “Well,” she says. “What are you waiting for?”  
  
The Kinlan men hunker down in the seats, silent and sullen, like a group of scolded schoolchildren.  
  
“Um, Mrs. Kinlan,” Woody says, clearing his throat. “You’re really not supposed to wear dress shoes when you’re sitting shiva.”

“I have bad arches,” she says, flashing him a look sharp enough for a circumcision.  
  
  
 _7:45 pm_  
  
  
Liam looks down at his watch. They’ve been sitting shiva for almost four hours. He wonders what sort of passive-aggressive sniping they might have gotten into if the room hadn’t filled with the somber-faced neighbors coming to pay their respects; it becomes clear to him that the reason for filling the shiva house with visitors is most likely to prevent the mourners from tearing each other limb from limb.  
  
Liam starts to zone out again when Louis leans into him.  
  
“You used to date that Malik kid, didn’t you?”  
  
“Zayn. Yeah. We were friends. What in the world made you think of Zayn Malik?”

“He’s at the store.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. He works there. You should go by and say hello.” Louis waggles his eyebrows.

“Zayn Malik,” Liam repeats. The name alone conjures images of his wicked smile, the taste of cigarettes and coffee when Liam would kiss him.  
  
“He’d be happy to see you, I bet.”  
  
“Maybe some other time,” Liam sighs. “We are kind of in the middle of mourning our father.”  
  
  
 _11:30 pm_  
  
  
The last visitors have finally left. Everyone can feel the house exhaling, returning to its normal proportions.  
  
Liam barely has the energy to take his pants off before collapsing on the mostly opened sofa bed in what once was the basement before it became Louis room as a teenager. Louis and Eleanor have taken over Liam’s room citing Eleanor’s fragile condition as an inability to sleep on a fold out sofa that’s end leans precariously against a foosball table.  
  
Liam’s legs tilted upward toward the foosball table. There, beneath the house, in the oblong shadow cast by the single light bulb all he can think about are two things.  
  
The first that a few miles away, the head of the Kinlan family is buried overlooking where a few gravel roads intersect.  
  
The second that Zayn Malik works at his family’s record store.


	3. Day 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/gho4life/media/Day2_zps4c28df2e.jpg.html)   
>   
> 

**_7:45 am  
  
_** Liam is awoken by a low groan floating through the small basement window, the soft rhythmic sloshing of water in the pool.  Liam pads over to the window, rising ever so slightly onto his tiptoes, just enough to peer over the window ledge to see Harry and Niall enjoying some early morning sex in the pool they all swam in as children.  
  
He can hear Niall’s muffled voice groaning something over and over again as they gather momentum. The first song that comes to mind is “God Save the Queen,” and he hums it loudly to drown out the muffled cries and grunts seeping through the window as he flees to the linoleum safety of the closet-sized bathroom.  
  
He’s still peeing when he reaches the end, so he loudly hums the theme to Friends in a continuous loop until he’s washed his hands and brushed his teeth.  
  
When Liam comes out of the bathroom, the noise has diminished and his mother is sitting on the edge of his bed.  
  
“Sleep well?” she says.  
  
“Not really.”  
  
Outside the moaning and sloshing begins again. Charlotte looks toward the window and smiles at Liam. “That boy,” she says, shaking her head fondly.  
  
“I miss your father,” she says after a beat.  
  
“I miss him too.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“I missed him while he was still alive.”  
  
She nods. “He was never comfortable expressing himself. But he loved you very much.”  
  
“Not like he loved you.”  
  
She smiles and rubs the back of her neck.  
  
Outside, Harry and Niall have finally, thankfully finished if only due to River’s interruption.  
  
“Jesus Christ Harry!” River’s voice echoes throughout the room. “You haven’t even been here twenty-four hours!”  
  
“You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first, wanker!”  
  
Liam hears Niall mumbling apologies as he sprints back into the house.  
  
Finally, a welcome quiet fills the room.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t have your old room,” Charlotte says. “I thought Lou and El could use some privacy. They’ve been trying to conceive, you know.”

“River mentioned something.”

“That sofa bed is fine for sleeping, but it’s simply not built for procreation. The springs creak like a couple of cats in heat. You can hear it throughout the house.”

“I don’t suppose I can stop you from telling me why you know that.”  
  
“Your father and I made love on every bed in this house.”  
  
“Of course you did.”  
  
“Anyway, I found an ovulation test kit in the wastebasket in the hall loo, so I’m thinking these are key nights for Eleanor.”  
  
  
 ** _8:15 am  
  
  
_** A shower and a cuppa in the morning is an imperative for the Kinlan men, whose disdain for any time before noon is legendary in this region. While none of them may be blood related, waking up a Kinlan man in the morning is taking your life into your own hands.  
  
The problem is that the water heater is so old that it can’t accommodate so many showers at the same time, and within minutes, the water goes from steaming, to tepid, to icy.  
  
Adding to the confusion, Harry and Eleanor are both blow-drying their hair while River is making coffee, so the circuit breakers trip, knocking out half the power in the house, including the basement lights.  
  
  
 ** _10:00 am_**  
  
  
“It was a Saturday morning,” River says, “and, Mom, you were off visiting some relative we had never heard of. Dad was up on the roof, hammering the rain gutters back on or something. He was making so much noise, so I was down in the basement, watching TV. It was a Brady Bunch movie, I think. The one where they go to Hawaii.”  
  
“I remember that one,” Harry says. “Alice hurts her back having a hula lesson, because of Peter’s bad luck charm.”  
  
“Uh… Sure,” River says. “That’s not really important to this story.”  
  
“I remember thinking it was nice that Alice got to go on vacation with them,” Harry says. “I mean, she was the housekeeper. You got the feeling that she hadn’t really gone anywhere before.”  
  
“Harry remembers every show or movie he’s ever seen,” Niall says proudly, like the family might not know.  
  
“Now if only that were a marketable skill,” River says.

Niall looks taken aback, but Harry laughs. He and River have a long history of insulting each other. They don’t even hear it anymore.

Niall and Eleanor are on the couch; Jade is in an armchair, her feet up on one of the plastic folding chairs; and Erik is reading the _Times_ in the backyard. The rest of family is back in their low shiva chairs, steeling themselves for another ass-numbing day of greeting visitors. Charlotte has asked them all to remember personal stories about Simon, which she is scribbling into a large brown journal.

“So, anyway, that’s where I was, watching television, when I got my first erection. I was terrified. No clue what was happening.”

“I’ll never forgive myself for that.” Charlotte sighs.

“Hardly your worst offense,” River says with a smirk. “So I run upstairs and I scream out the window to Dad, but he can’t hear me over the hammering. So I step outside and call up to him, but he still can’t hear me. So I grab a football off the lawn — Louis was always leaving footballs on the lawn — and I throw it up to the roof. I only meant for it to hit the roof and roll down, just to catch his attention, but I guess I didn’t know my own strength, and the ball hits Dad square on the back of his head, and he loses his balance and falls off the roof, pulling the rain gutter off with him as he goes.”

“I don’t remember this at all,” Harry says.

“Because it didn’t happen on a television show,” River says. He turns to Niall. “Harry was their last child. He was basically raised by the television. We don’t hold it against him.”

“Spiteful pratt,” Charlotte says with a smile.

“So Dad’s lying on the ground, flat on his back. His arm is broken, and he’s got this big gash on his forehead, and his eyes are closed, and I’m sure I’ve just killed him. So I scream, ‘Daddy, wake up!’ And he opens his eyes and he says, very calmly, ‘I spent all morning putting that gutter on.’ Then he gets up, and we get in the car, and he drives one-armed to the emergency room. And the nurse at the desk looks him up and down and says, ‘What in the world happened to you?’ and he says, ‘My son got an erection.’”

Everyone laughs.  
  
“That’s such a perfect story,” Charlotte says, scribbling. “That’s so very Simon.”  
  
“That was great. Can you tell another story about your penis?”  
  
“Shut up, Liam. Why don’t you tell your favorite memory now?”  
  
“I’m still thinking.”  
  
“I’ve got one,” Harry says. “When I was in youth FC, I had two left feet. So they put me out in back field. And in the last quarter, I tripped over two balls that cost us the game. Our coach was this fat guy, I forgot his name. He got all crazy and started screaming at me. He called me worthless. So Pop stepped between us and I didn’t see what he did, but next thing I know, the coach is on the ground, and Pop is stepping on his chest. And he says, ‘Call me son worthless again.’ ”  
  
“That’s fantastic,” Eleanor says, clapping. “I never heard that one.”  
  
“This might sound twisted, but I hope, when I have a kid, that someone calls him a name, just so I can do for him what Pop did for me.”  
  
“That’s beautiful, Harry,” Charlotte says.  
  
“Yes,” Niall says. “But why not just hope that no one calls ye kid a name?”  
  
Harry looks at him. “Don’t do that.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You know damn well what.”  
  
“I was just saying that as long as you’re being theoretical, why not aim higher?”  
  
“My dad stood up for me. I want to stand up for my kid.”  
  
“And teach him that violence is a legitimate means of conflict resolution?”  
  
“He’s going to have to learn it sometime.”  
  
“A few choice words might have shamed your coach into apologizing.”  
  
“But if he had, I wouldn’t have had a story to remind me of how my father took care of me, and you wouldn’t have been able to suck all the joy out of it, and where would we all be then?”  
  
Niall blinks repeatedly, blushing as he gets to his feet. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I was being insensitive.”  
  
“Apology accepted,” Harry says without looking at him.  
  
“I’m going to take a walk and return some calls.”  
  
“You meant well, honey,” Jade says to him as he leaves.  
  
Once he’s gone, Harry looks around at his family sheepishly. “He takes a little getting used to… Y’know being Irish and all.”  
  
“Well, you shouldn’t have dressed him down like that, in front of your family,” Jade says. “He’s still a guest here.”  
  
“I thought you were completely justified,” Charlotte says.  
  
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree then,” Jade says.  
  
 ** _  
11:15 am  
  
  
_** Mr. Grimsby is all over Charlotte. He clasps her hand between his; he pats her arm, his fingers snaking around her wrist, his eyes darting back and forth across her chest like a tiny tennis match is being played across the line of her cleavage. He’s pulled his folding chair up close to her, and with Charlotte down in the shiva chair, he is perfectly positioned to ogle.  
  
“I’ve been through this, Charlotte,” he says. His dark, bushy eyebrows arching under his wiry silver hair. “When I lost Adelaide, the community was very supportive. Simon was wonderful. You remember, he came over and fixed the air conditioner during my shiva? All those people in the house, and the air handler crapped out.”  
  
“He knew machines,” Charlotte says.  
  
“Look at that,” River whispers. “He’s staring at her breasts, and her head is practically between his knees.”  
  
“It’s just the angle,” Liam says. “These low chairs.”  
  
“These chairs are a practical joke. And Mom should wear less revealing shirts.”  
  
“She doesn’t own less revealing shirts.”  
  
“I feel like I’m watching the opening scene of an AARP porno,” Harry says.  
  
Grimsby rubs Charlotte’s wrist. He’s the only visitor right now, so he’s got her cornered. Not that she seems to mind the attention. “If you ever need to talk, Char. Day or night. Just call and I’ll be there.”  
  
“I bet he will,” River says.  
  
“Thank you, Ashton. I appreciate that.”  
  
“It can be very lonely.”  
  
“I don’t doubt it.”  
  
Grimsby sighs and looks down at her, reluctant to let go of her hand. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check on you.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
He stands up and then pulls her up by her hand to clutch her in a full-bodied embrace. “You’re going to be fine, Charlotte.”  
  
Charlotte pats his back while he holds her tight.  
  
“The old guy just copped a feel,” Louis says, joining in.  
  
“Give him a break,” Liam says. “They’ve known each other for years.”  
  
Grimsby finally lets go of Charlotte and turns to face the rest of the Kinlans. “You kids take care of your beautiful mother, okay?”  
  
“I believe he had an erection,” River says once he’s gone.  
  
“Oh, stop it. He did not,” Charlotte says.  
  
“Pushing seventy and he’s still getting it up,” Harry muses. “The man’s a keeper.”  
  
“You’re all being horrible. You’ve known Mr. Grimsby forever. He’s a fine man.”  
  
“That fine man was hitting on you.” Louis.  
  
“He was totally hitting on you.” River.  
  
“He was most definitely not hitting on me,” Charlotte says, flushed with pleasure.  
  
Jade sticks her head in from the kitchen. “Is that horny old goat gone yet?”  
  
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Charlotte says. “He was being compassionate.”  
  
“Not as compassionate as he’d like, I’m sure.”  
  
“So, he’s lonely. You and I, at least, should be sympathetic,” Charlotte says. “At our age, loneliness can seem so permanent.”  
  
 _“Ah… Look at all the lonely people,”_ Harry sings.  
  
“Well, he might have had the decency to wait until you were through sitting shiva before groping you like that, that’s all.”  
  
“He’s a tactile man. That’s just his way.”  
  
Jade is looking at Charlotte, shaking her head. “You don’t actually believe half the things you say, do you?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she says, sitting back in her chair. “I can be pretty convincing.”  
  
  
 ** _7:00 pm_**  
  
The house is filled again, thirty or forty visitors, sitting in the plastic chairs, crammed around the buffet in the dining room, spilling over into the front hall and kitchen. The smell of perfume and instant coffee fills the air.  
  
The energy changes a little when some girls show up to visit Harry. There are three of them and they breeze into the room in a whirl of bronzed legs and bouncing asses as they make their way to Harry’s chair.  
  
They instantly become the center of attention, and while other conversations are still going on, these girls, as they kiss Harry’s cheek, seem to be followed by their own spotlight.  
  
After the kisses, the hugs, the dramatic expressions of condolence punctuated by the flipping of hair and batting of lashes, three empty chairs magically materialize in front of Harry’s shiva chair, and the girls sit down.  
  
Liam recognizes these girls, old high school friends of Harry’s, all of whom he slept with repeatedly, two of whom, it was rumored, he slept with together on more than one occasion.  
  
“Oh my God, Harry,” Kendall says. She and Harry were on and off for years. “I haven’t seen you since that boat party, you remember? That Spanish kid with the yacht? Oh my God, we got so messed up that night.”  
  
“I remember,” Harry says.  
  
“I’m so sorry about your father,” Taylor says.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“He was such a nice man,” Paige says.  
  
“So, Haz,” Kendall says. “What have you been up to?”  
  
“I’ve been doing charity work in Taiwan.”  
  
Liam shoots River an incredulous look at the lie Harry just dropped.  
  
“That’s so cool!” The trio of girls coos at him.  
  
They laugh at pretty much everything Harry says, and Taylor, in particular, seems to hang on his every word, her chair gradually sliding closer until her ankles rest easily against his.  
  
And then Niall comes back, having spent the afternoon out of the house after his argument with Harry. Liam, River, and Louis watch, slack-jawed, as he enters the room, sees him register these three girls surrounding his man as he makes his way through the chairs to Harry’s side.  
  
“Hey, babe,” he says, smiling first at him and then at the girls. “How’s it going?”  
  
“Great,” Harry says. “These are some old friends of mine from secondary.”  
  
“And sixth form,” Taylor reminds him with a smile.  
  
“That’s right. Taylor and I were also at uni together.”  
  
“I love the name Taylor,” Niall says, voice dripping with ice and disdain.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“This is Niall,” Harry says. He doesn’t say “my fiancée,” or any other designation, and the omission lands with a resounding thud.  
  
“I’m getting out before World War three breaks out,” Liam whispers to River, but loud of enough for Louis to hear.  
  
“Go by the store and lock up for me, yeah?” Louis says with a glint in his eye, tossing Liam the store keys.  
  
“And while you’re there,” River adds, like an idea has just come to him. “You can play catch up with little Zaynie Malik.”  
  
Liam flips them both off and sprints out the door.  
  
  
 ** _7:45 pm_**  
  
When Zayn sees Liam, his face lights up and he leaps over the counter to hug him. Liam notes that Zayn can still pass for a college student.  
  
“Hey, Leeyum Kinlan.” He feels thin in Liam’s arms, less substantial than he remembers.  
  
“Hi, Zayn.”  
  
Zayn kisses his cheek and then steps back so they can look at each other. “I’m so sorry about Simon,” he says.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“I saw you at the funeral.”  
  
“Really? I didn’t see you.”  
  
“I avoided you. I never know what to say at funerals.”  
  
“Fair enough.”  
  
Zayn’s honesty has always been like nudity in an action movie: gratuitous, but no less welcome for it.  
  
“So, how long has it been?” he says. “Four, five years?”  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
He gives Liam the once-over. “You look like hell.”  
  
“Thanks. You look great.”  
  
“Don’t I, though?” he says, smiling. “So, I heard about your girlfriend, or lack thereof.”  
  
“Good news travels fast.”  
  
“Well, your brother is my boss.”  
  
“And how’s that working out for you?”  
  
Zayn shrugs. “He’s an ass, but Lou’s always been that way.”  
  
“You’re feeling sorry for me,” Zayn says looking deep into Liam’s eyes.  
  
“No.”  
  
“You never were any good at covering up.”  
  
“I’m feeling much too sorry for me these days to worry about anyone else.”  
  
“A girl left you, Li. It happens every day.”  
  
“Jesus, Zayn.”  
  
“I’m sorry. That was harsh, and totally uncalled for.”  
  
“And what’s your story?”  
  
He shrugs. “I don’t have one. No great traumatic event to blame my small life on. No catastrophes, no divorce. Plenty of bad men, but plenty of good ones too, that simply didn’t want me in the end. I tried to make something of myself and I failed. That happens every day too.”  
  
They look at each other and then away. An awkward silence fills the store, which Zayn fills by saying, “Awkward silence.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So, you’re sitting shiva.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I’ll have to make it over there one of these days.”  
  
“You’ve got five left.”  
  
“You’re really doing all seven days? That’s hardcore.”  
  
“Tell me about it.”  
  
“Well, I still skate every morning at seven, if you want to come by.”  
  
“They’re open that early?”  
  
“The skate park opens at one, but the owner lets me have a key in exchange for sexual favors.”  
  
“That’s good.”  
  
“That was a joke, Liam.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“You used to laugh at my jokes.”  
  
“You used to be funnier.”  
  
He laughs at that. “They all can’t be gems.”  
  
Zayn looks at Liam for a long moment.  
  
“Listen, Li,” he says. “I think we’ve reached that point where this conversation runs the risk of devolving into small talk, and I don’t think either of us wants that. So I’m going to give you a kiss and send you on your way.”  
  
Zayn leans forward and kisses Liam’s cheek, just grazing the corner of his lips.  
  
“I did that on purpose,” he says with a grin. “Give you something other than your ex to think about while you sit all day.”  
  
Liam smiles. “You were always so good at not covering up.”  
  
Zayn’s smile is sad and a little off. “It’s this town. It’s obliterated whatever filters I have left.”


	4. Day 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/gho4life/media/Day3_zps510228b4.jpg.html)   
>   
> 

**_9:00 am_**  
  
Breakfast is served. On platters, of course. The pastries and bagels continue to arrive every day, courtesy of the Kinlan’s friends and set out by Jade, who quietly lets herself in every morning to see to things.  
  
Niall is buttering some toast for Harry, and Harry is creaming his coffee, and they’re smiling at each other in a way that makes it hard to look at them. It appears that there was no lasting fallout from the Taylor/Kendall/Paige visit.  
  
River is slipping nips of Jameson into his coffee while Erik chews a muffin and reads the _Wall Street Journal._ Charlotte is in the kitchen with Jade, organizing the endless array of catered platters. Eleanor is spreading fat-free cream cheese on a rice cake, and Louis is sitting next to her, chewing a glazed donut. He’s at the head of the table, but just to the side of their father’s chair, which sits symbolically empty.  
  
No one says anything. No one dares.  
  
“Listen,” Louis says. “We need to talk about the shop.”  
  
Eleanor looks up from her rice cake, and you can hear her ticking, the woman behind the man. Whatever he’s going to say, she knows all about it.  
  
“What about it?” Harry says.  
  
“Paul will come by at some point to discuss Dad’s will. But this is the part I want to discuss. Dad left half of the business to me. The other half is divided into three even shares for River, Liam, and Harry. So together, each of you will own one-sixth of a business that has not shown a profit in going on three years. The shares won’t generate any cash for you. Paul will have the bank value the shares, and then I’m going to buy them back from you. Depending on the value, I may not have the cash readily available, so I hope you’ll all cut me a little slack until I come up with it.”  
  
“What is each share worth, roughly?” Harry says. “I mean, what are we talking about here?”  
  
“What about Mom?” River asks. “Isn’t the business hers too?”  
  
“Between Dad’s life insurance and pension, she’s more than taken care of for the rest of her life,” Louis says. “I know you all might have been expecting a little bit more from Dad’s estate. Unfortunately, there’s not much that isn’t tied up in the business, which, like I said, isn’t in the best shape. There is the house though. It’s been assessed at upwards of a million pounds. Dad has it set up in a trust for us. When Mom sells it, we’ll all make a nice profit.”  
  
“I’m not selling the house,” Charlotte says from the kitchen doorway.  
  
“Well, not right now.”  
  
“Not ever!” she says. “I’m only sixty-three years old, for God’s sake.”  
  
“I just meant—”  
  
“I know what you meant. You want to pull up the floorboards and look for money, you go right ahead. But make no mistake, I’m going to die in this house!”  
  
“Okay, Mom,” Louis says, turning red. He and Eleanor exchange a quick, guarded look. “Forget I said anything.”  
  
Charlotte starts to say something else, but Jade comes up behind her and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Char,” she says. “He didn’t mean it like that.”  
  
“This is my home,” Charlotte says, still irate.  
  
“I know,” Jade says, leading her back into the kitchen. “It’s okay.”  
  
River, Liam, and Harry all stare at Louis, pissed at him for implicating them.  
  
“The point is,” Louis says, “I’ve been working my ass off to try to save this business. I still don’t know if I’m going to be able to. We’re looking at closing one or possibly two stores—”  
  
“I was actually thinking I’d like to join the company,” Harry says.  
  
His statement is greeted with stunned silence. Eleanor looks at Louis, her eyes wide with alarm. Niall looks at Harry, proud and knowing. Even Erik puts down his paper to pay attention. River looks at Liam, his eyes widening with glee. His smile says, _this is about to get good.  
  
_ “What are you talking about?” Louis says.  
  
Harry wipes his mouth and clears his throat. “I talked to Pop about it a little while back. It’s something he built for us, something he wanted to pass on. It’s his legacy to us, and I’d like to be a part of it.”  
  
“Okay.” Louis nods his head and puts down his coffee mug. “And what is it you’d like to do for the company, Harold?”  
  
“I want to help you grow it.”  
  
“The only thing you’ve ever grown was hemp.”  
  
“And I made a profit.”  
  
“Not nearly as much as we spent on your lawyers when you got busted.”  
  
“Listen, Lou. You don’t believe in me. I get that. I never believed in myself either, really. But people can change. I’ve changed. And we complement each other. You’re the brains of the operation, I know that. But what about advertising and promotion? What about personnel and PR? I’m a people person, Lou. That’s who I am. And you’re… not one. You’re a good guy, but you’re a hard-ass and, let’s face it, you’re a little scary. You’re actually scaring me right now. Your face looks very red. Are you even breathing? Is he breathing?”  
  
Louis brings his hand crashing down on the table. “This is my life!” he shouts. “I have given the last five years of my life to this company, and it’s barely supporting El and me. I’m in debt up to my ass, and the company is in trouble. I’m sorry, Harry, but we just can’t afford to be the next stop on your tour of professional self-destruction.”  
  
“I understand why you’d say that, I do,” Harry says. “But this is a family business, Louis. And I’m in the lucky adopted kid club, same as you.”  
  
Louis gets up and shoves his chair back. “We’re not having this conversation.”  
  
Charlotte comes back into the room, looking concerned. “What conversation?”  
  
“Fine,” Harry says. “I kind of dropped that like a bomb on you. It’s a lot to absorb, and you need a little time.”  
  
“Absorb what?” Charlotte says. “Someone tell me what’s going on.”  
  
“There’s nothing to absorb, you dumb shit! You’re not coming to work for me!”  
  
“Well, technically speaking, we’d be partners. I’ll buy out Liam and River. Li’s not interested in the business, right, Liam? And River, you’re already richer than God.”  
  
Liam steals a glance at Erik to see if he’s offended. He is not.  
  
“Baby brother, you can’t even buy a goddamn suit.”  
  
“People change, big brother.”  
  
Louis’s eyes settle on Niall for a long, uncomfortable beat, and a bitter smile slowly spreads across his face. “Oh. It all makes sense now. Engaged.” He shakes his head. “You’re a whore.”  
  
“What did you just call him?” Harry says, jumping to his feet.  
  
“Not him, you. You’ve always been a whore.”  
  
“Why don’t you come a little closer and say that?”  
  
“Not in the house!” Charlotte says. She never broke up their fights; she thought it was healthy for brothers to pound on each other every now and then, just not where they might break her things.  
  
Louis steps right over to Harry, where his height and weight disadvantage is more readily apparent.  
  
He’s about two feet away when Niall steps between them.  
  
Louis looks him up and down as if he can’t quite believe he’s there. Then he nods and looks over at Harry.  
  
“Stupid. Little. Whore.”  
  
Harry smiles like a movie star. “Infertile limp-dick.”  
  
Louis moves so fast that it’s impossible to say whether Eleanor’s shriek is in response to Harry’s remark or the sudden ensuing violence. His hands latch on to Harry’s neck and the two of them spin backward into the antique buffet, knocking over platters, candlesticks, and Niall, who was still between them when Louis attacked.  
  
“Not in the house!” Charlotte shrieks, smacking at their backs. “Take it outside!”  
  
And who knows how much damage they might do, how badly Harry will beat Louis’s ass, if right then Sophia doesn’t appear like some kind of mirage, floating in from the front hall with an awkward smile. “Hi, everyone,” she says.  
  
At the sight of Sophia, every person in the room freezes, along with most of Liam’s internal organs. Louis looks up at her in shock, his hand still cocked to punch Harry, who has fallen to his knees against the wall.  
  
“The door was open,” Sophia says. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”  
  
“Sophia, dear,” Charlotte says, suddenly composed. “What a nice surprise.”  
  
These are the moments when the Kinlan children really have to wonder what reality their mother is living in. She can go from casually watching two of her sons pummeling each other to graciously welcoming the woman who ruined her other son’s life without missing a beat.  
  
As for Liam, he’s shocked and self-conscious that Sophia is here, that their broken relationship is now, in effect, on display. But he also feels an unbidden rush of excitement at her arrival, wondering at the speed of light if this somehow means they’ll be getting back together. In that instant, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched; she’ll stay for the shiva, they’ll have some hard talks, he’ll yell and she’ll cry, but she’ll still bunk with him on that pitiful sofa bed in the basement.  
  
And when the shiva is over, they’ll go home and start again.  
  
Sophia looks at Liam. He looks at her. And then he remembers that she screwed one of his professors. A man Liam looked up to, respected even! She’s not here to get him back or even to pay her respects. She has some ulterior motive. And now the rage is back, along with a healthy measure of self-loathing for being the pathetic pratt who wants his cheating girlfriend back.  
  
“I’m so sorry about Simon,” Sophia says, hugging Charlotte.  
  
“Thank you, dear.”  
  
And before things can get any more surreal, Harry, seeing his opening, hauls off from under Louis and sucker punches him right on the chin and Louis goes down hard. Harry jumps to his feet and stands over Louis, wincing as he shakes off his fingers.  
  
Sophia looks at Liam, eyebrows raised in surprise. Liam looks back at her with a light shrug, and for that single instant, they are them again. And then he remembers they’re not and looks away. Eleanor is on her knees, pulling up a dazed Louis, while Niall hustles Harry out of the room.  
  
“Who’s the little whore now, bitch?” Harry says, cradling his hand.  
  
  
 ** _10:15 am_**  
  
“I’m so sorry about your father,” Sophia says once the room has cleared out. She moves to hug Liam, but he steps back like she’s contagious. She lowers her hands and nods sadly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“Are you seriously asking me that?”  
  
“No, I guess not,” she says. “This must be hard for you.”  
  
“It’s not like he died suddenly. I’ll be fine.”  
  
“When will you be coming home?”  
  
“I don’t have a home.”  
  
“You know what I meant.”  
  
“In about a week.”  
  
She gives me a funny look. “You’re going to spend a week here? Every time you were here with me, you couldn’t wait to be out that front door.”  
  
“We’re sitting shiva.”  
  
“Oh. I didn’t think—”  
  
“Yeah. Dad wanted it.”  
  
She is momentarily distracted by a half-trashed platter of smoked salmon on the table. “Wow, that really reeks.”  
  
“It’s lox. That’s how it’s supposed to smell.”  
  
“Well, could we go outside for a little bit? I can’t handle the smell of fish right now.”  
  
“I don’t mind it. And you won’t be here for very long anyway.”  
  
“Liam, please. I know it’s a bad time, but I really need to talk to you.”  
  
“What, Sophia? What could you possibly have left to tell me? Are you and the Professor getting married? Is that it?”  
  
“No. It’s nothing like that.” She is looking around at the discarded food all over the dining room table, the half-eaten bagels and Danishes, the sliced vegetables, the maple syrup and waffle fragments smeared across the tablecloth.  
  
“Good, because, you know, adultery is probably not the best foundation upon which to build a marriage.”  
  
“Oh, crap.”  
  
“What?”  
  
She looks at Liam and then covers her mouth and bolts from the room.  
  
He finds her in the powder room, vomiting into the toilet. When she’s done, she flushes the toilet and sits on the floor with her back against the wall, wiping her mouth with a torn strand of toilet paper.  
  
“Jesus, I hate this part,” she says.  
  
Sophia looks up at Liam, and there’s something in her eyes that he doesn’t like. When you’ve been living with someone for a while, you occasionally share these brief psychic moments, and right in that instant Liam knows what she’s going to say just before she says it, even while he’s thinking that it can’t possibly be true.  
  
  
 ** _10:30 am_**  
  
  
“So, I’m pregnant,” Sophia says gingerly.  
  
They are standing on the patio in the backyard, overlooking the pool, which is brimming from yesterday’s rain. Today the skies are clear, and the September sun is burning through what’s left of the morning fog.  
  
Liam looks at Sophia. She looks at him. It’s an electric moment. But as it happens, Niall has picked this moment to step out into the yard, taking a bag of garbage to the bin. “Hey, guys,” he calls to them, all carefree and breezy, walking over to extend his hand to Sophia. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Niall.”  
  
“Sophia,” she says, shaking his hand.  
  
“Don’t mind me,” Niall says, tossing the garbage into the bin and then he disappears back into the house.  
  
“And who, exactly, is that?” Sophia says.  
  
“That’s Niall.”  
  
“So he says. Quite the firm grip, too.”  
  
“He’s with Harry.”  
  
“Oh. I won’t get too attached, then.”  
  
“Don’t do that.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Make fun of my family like you’re still a part of it.”  
  
Sophia looks stung. Liam thinks it’s a good look for her. “Fair enough.”  
  
“I’m almost three months.” She blurts out after a beat.  
  
“You can’t possibly think that it’s mine.”  
  
“Yes, I can. There’s a very distinct chance. Trust me.”  
  
“Trust is not my first impulse when it comes to you.”  
  
“It could be your baby, Liam.”  
  
“Bullshit.”  
  
“It’s not.”  
  
“Get out. I won’t let you do this to me. Not now, not ever.”  
  
She looks at Liam for a long moment and then shakes her head, giving in.  She doesn’t go through the house when she leaves, instead cutting through the side yard to avoid any of the other members of Liam’s family.  
  
  
 ** _11:25 am  
  
  
_** No visitors yet. The mornings are generally slow. Sophia has left to go check into the Marriott. She’s going to stay overnight, determined that she and Liam will talk this through further.  
  
Harry is being yelled at by Niall for god knows what behind closed doors not thick enough to drown out his high-pitched, weepy admonishments.  
  
Louis has used the excuse to go check on things at the store. Eleanor is on the couch, balancing her coffee mug and some mini muffins on her plate. Erik’s out in the backyard, trying to run a conference call. Charlotte, River, and Liam are sitting on regular chairs, not willing to spend a moment longer than they have to in the shiva chairs.  
  
“What did Sophia have to say for herself?” Charlotte says.

“Nothing. The usual.”

“She looked good,” River says. “Infidelity agrees with her.”  
  
“I think it’s interesting that she came,” Charlotte says. “I think it means something.”

“What, Mum? What does it mean?”  
  
“I’m just saying. Things may not be as finished as you think.”  
  
“Does it mean she wasn’t screwing my professor for a year?”  
  
“No, Liam, it doesn’t mean that. She cheated on you, and I know that hurts. But it’s only sex, Li, scratching an itch. We’ve been programmed to attach far too much significance to it, to the point where we lose sight of everything else. It’s just one tree in a thick forest.”  
  
“It’s a pretty big damn tree.”  
  
“Over the course of a fifty-year marriage, one bad year isn’t very significant. Your relationship might still be there to be saved. But you’ll never know if you keep indulging your hate and anger like the world owes you reparations.”  
  
“Thanks Mum. As always, your unsolicited advice, however useless, is greatly appreciated.”  
  
“You’re welcome, sweetie.”  
  
Harry emerges and lowers himself by his arms like a gymnast into an empty shiva chair, letting out a long, dejected sigh. “Apparently, I’m an irredeemable asshole.”  
  
“And yet, I have a feeling he’s not done trying to redeem you,” Charlotte says.  
  
“Go figure.”  
  
“Why are you doing this, Harry?”  
  
“Doing what?”  
  
“Stringing that poor boy along.” River.  
  
“Jesus Christ.” Harry.  
  
“I think he’s nice,” Eleanor says. “And very attractive.”  
  
“Yes, he’s lovely,” my mother says. “But this isn’t like one of your primary school flings, Harold.”  
  
“I’m not as young as you like to think, Mum. And neither are you.”  
  
“Don’t be spiteful, love. It doesn’t suit you.”  
  
“And that skirt doesn’t suit you. You’ll be giving everyone crotch shots from your shiva chair.”  
  
“I just want to make sure you’ve thought this through,” Charlotte says. “Because there’s no scenario in which this doesn’t end badly.”  
  
“Much like this conversation,” Liam says.  
  
“Which ends right now,” Harry says.  
  
“We are your family, Harold. We love you.”  
  
Liam, River, and Harry all say “But!” at the same instant.  
  
Charlotte looks around, momentarily thrown. “That’s right. But. _But_ it appears he’s in this deeper than you are. _But_ you’re doing and saying things that make me believe you’re not going to start a family with him. _But_ have you even thought about him in all of this?”  
  
Harry shakes his head, not taking the bait.  
  
“What happens to Niall when this runs its course, Harry? You’ll have no trouble finding new lovers—knowing you, you already have. But you’re wasting time for him that he could be finding the right person.”  
  
“And why can’t I be the right person?”  
  
Charlotte smiles at him, sadly and with great tenderness. “Don’t be an ass.”  
  
“That’s it, I’m out of here,” Harry says, getting to his feet.  
  
“I’ll come with you,” Liam says.  
  
“You’re not supposed to leave the house,” Charlotte says. “We’re sitting shiva.”  
  
“Ask River about his marriage,” Liam says. “We’ll be back before the dust settles.”  
  
“Dick,” River says.  
  
“Sorry, bro. It’s every man for himself.”  
  
Louis, returned from the store, steps through the living room doorway just as Harry reaches it. “Hey, Haz,” he says, smiles, and then punches him square in the jaw, sending him sprawling back into the room, knocking over a handful of chairs.  
  
“Louis!” Eleanor shrieks.  
  
“He sucker punched me before.”  
  
Harry, flat on his back, props himself up on one elbow, wincing as he rubs his jaw. Niall comes running down the stairs, having heard the commotion. When he sees Harry lying on the floor, he shakes his head in disgust and turns on his heel, disappearing back into the second flood.  
  
“If I stand up, are you going to hit me again?” Harry says to Louis.  
  
“No, I’m good,” Louis says, rubbing his knuckles. He reaches over and offers Harry his hand. Harry takes it and Louis yanks him to his feet, and then, to everyone’s surprise, pulls Harry into a little hug and whispers something into his ear. Harry nods and pats the back of Louis’s head. Then he turns to Liam. “You coming?”  
  
“Unless Louis wants to hit me too.”  
  
“What could I do to you that the universe hasn’t already done?” Louis says.  
  
“Oh,” Harry says, like he’s just remembered something. “Sophia’s pregnant. It might be Liam’s.”  
  
Everyone in the room turns to stare at Liam.  
  
“I think I speak for everyone when I say, holy shit!” River says.  
  
“How could you not tell me that?” Charlotte says.  
  
“Now I’m going to hit you,” Liam says to Harry.  
  
He shrugs. “Every man for himself.”  
  
Then Eleanor stands up and very deliberately lets her coffee mug and saucer fall to the floor, where they shatter into pieces. She looks around at all the family as tears form in her eyes.  
  
“Unbelievable,” she says.  
  
And then, before anyone can say anything, can figure out what set her off, she turns and runs crying past them, up the stairs, and moments later they all jump as the door to Liam’s old bedroom slams shut and all the lights on the first floor go out.  
  
  
 ** _11:45 am_**  
  
  
Liam’s never been in a Porsche before. Harry’s rides low to the ground and you can feel every seam in the road, every pebble, transmitted through the hard leather seat. The floor is strewn with Red Bull cans and fast food wrappers, the ashtray spilling over with bent butts, and gas receipts.  
  
“Nice car,” Liam says.  
  
Harry shifts into third and guns it. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“You’re thinking I’m a fuckup and Niall’s rich, and I’m just with him because he pays my way and I get to drive cars like this.”  
  
“Why are you with him?”  
  
Harry sighs and shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to grow up, Li. I know I’ve kind of cemented my place as the family fuckup, but believe it or not, that’s not who I want to be. And having hit more than my share of brick walls, I figured maybe a better class of significant other would be a good place to start.”  
  
“So you’re not using him for his money. You’re using him for his class.”  
  
“I’m not using him. Not any more than he’s using me. Isn’t that what love is? Two people who fulfill needs in each other?”  
  
Liam shrugs. “My ex-girlfriend spent the last year of our relationship sleeping with my professor. Don’t ask me about love.”  
  
“Your pregnant ex-girlfriend.”  
  
“My pregnant ex-girlfriend.”  
  
Harry grins. “Looks like I’ve got some competition in the family fuckup department.”  
  
“It appears that way.”  
  
“How are you dealing with that, by the way?”  
  
“By trying really hard not to think about it.”  
  
“That’s what I would do,” he says approvingly. “So, where can I drop you?”  
  
“What do you mean? I thought we would get lunch or something.”  
  
“There’s something I have to go do.”  
  
“Something or someone?”  
  
“Your faith in me is duly noted.”

Liam looks out the window at a flock of geese flying by in a V formation, getting out while the getting’s good. “It’s not you, Haz. It’s humanity in general.”  
  
“Well, cry me a river.”  
  
“Okay, drop me at Broadgate.”  
  
“The ice rink?”  
  
“It’s a skate park, ice rink combo now, but yeah.”  
  
He gives Liam a quizzical look. “Going skating, are you?”  
  
“There’s something I want to see.”  
  
Harry gives him a wry look. “Something or someone?”  
  
Then, without warning, Harry swerves across the double yellow line to pass the minivan in front of them, and for a second they are faced with oncoming traffic and their own mortality.  
  
A second later he yanks them back across and, without downshifting, turns left through the intersection on what feels like two wheels, the centrifugal force throwing Liam against the door. “Jesus Christ, Harold!”  
  
The Porsche’s tires gain traction and we rocket down the street to a chorus of angry horns from all the motorists he almost killed, and Harry sighs.  
  
“Driving a Porsche is like fucking a model,” he says, and he would know. “It will never feel as good as it looks.”  
  
  
 ** _12:30 pm_**  
  
  
Liam finds Zayn in the ice rink.  He skates backward in circles to Duran Duran. He is wearing jeans and a worn Batman hoodie, his hair tucked into a black ski cap. He moves with grace and confidence, his face flushed from the cold, and he doesn’t see Liam, shivering in his polo shirt on the lowest bleacher, falling briefly in love with him again… _I’m on the hunt I’m after you…_ Duran Duran is done, and then Madonna comes on singing “Holiday.” Why are all skating rinks trapped in the eighties?  
  
Zayn picks up speed and then glides backward across the ice. As he moves past, his eyes casually sweep up to the bleachers and he sees Liam. The surprise throws his balance off, and he goes down on his ass hard. Liam runs through the opened door and out onto the ice, where he’s already back on his skates, dusting the ice flakes off his jeans.  
  
“You okay?” Liam asks.  
  
“You scared me,” Zayn says.  
  
“I didn’t mean to.”  
  
“You’re not allowed on the ice without skates.”  
  
“Right. Sorry.” Liam step back through the door onto the rubber matting.  
  
Zayn skates over to the door and gives Liam a long, measured look. Then he reaches into one of the pockets of his sweatshirt and tosses him a key chain. “There are hockey skates in the rental shack. Go grab yourself a pair and come on out.”  
  
“I wasn’t planning on skating.”  
  
“And I wasn’t planning on falling on my ass in front of an old boyfriend. Things happen. Just roll with it.”  
  
“I was never your boyfriend.”  
  
Zayn grins. “Fuck-buddy, then.”  
  
“We never actually had sex.”  
  
“And we never will if you keep using our past against me.”  
  
The hockey skates smell like something curled up and died in them. Liam’s laced up and on the ice in under five minutes.  
  
Liam hasn’t skated in years, but it comes back fast. While he was putting on his skates, Zayn dimmed the main lights and turned on the disco effects, so they are skating to “Time After Time” through a dusky universe of spinning blue stars.  
  
It’s like they’ve been transplanted into a romantic comedy, and all that’s left to do is say something meaningful and kiss Zayn at center ice while the music swells, and the happy ending is guaranteed. _If you’re lost you can look and you will find me, time after time.  
  
_ Zayn was always recklessly attracted to grand romantic gestures, to jumping into fountains fully clothed, to long, deep kisses in the rain. He dreamed of Hugh Grant confessing his love at press conference, of telling Tom Cruise that he had him at hello. But they are hardly free and clear for a happy ending. After all this time, they are little more than strangers to each other, each of them pretending otherwise for their own sad reasons.  
  
Liam doesn’t even know if he’s here because Zayn’s someone he once loved or because he’s just lonely and desperate and more than a little sexually frustrated and their past gives him something of a head start.  
  
And there’s something off about Zayn, something not quite there. Liam shouldn’t be there. He thinks he should be back at home, mourning his father and adjusting to the reality of possibly becoming one himself, continuing to put all his energies into falling out of love with Sophia.  
  
And yet… Zayn’s skin practically glows on the ice, and the thick black of hair slipping out from beneath his cap, and there’s something perfectly pretty about him. Liam watches his profile from the corner of his eye, his sculpted cheekbones, his big hopeful eyes that always seem seconds away from welling up. _If you fall I will catch you I’ll be waiting…  
  
_ “You want to hold hands?”  
  
Liam looks to see if he’s joking. He’s not.  
  
Liam considers telling Zayn about the baby that may or may not be his, but something stops him. He’d like to say it’s just his not having adjusted to the reality yet, but the truth is probably a good deal more self-serving than that.  
  
Liam takes his hand and they skate through the rotating constellations.  
  
  
 ** _12:55 pm_**  
  
  
A fat guy with a handlebar mustache and a jingling key ring shows up to open the skate center for business. He waves to Zayn, and then disappears into a back room. A moment later the music stops, the lights come back on, and the stars disappear.  
  
As if by some unspoken agreement, Zayn and Liam let go of each other. There will be no handholding under the harsh fluorescent lights. Handlebar man reappears driving a beat-up Zamboni onto the ice.  
  
“You know what would be nice?” Zayn says as they step off ice.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
He considers Liam for a long moment. “Never mind, I withdraw.”  
  
“Come on. What were you going to say?”  
  
“The moment’s passed.” He smiles and shrugs.  
  
“Thanks for the skate,” Liam says. “I needed that.”  
  
“I’m glad you came by,” Zayn says.  
  
One or both of them may be lying.  
  
  
 ** _1:00 pm  
  
  
_** Zayn is teaching a skating lesson, and Harry is late, naturally. Liam sits on a bench in the parking lot, watching the other skating instructors show up, slender women in baby T’s and black leggings that leave nothing to the imagination. They greet each other with waves and laughs.  
  
  
 ** _1:45 pm_**  
  
Harry drives them back home, somewhat more jittery than earlier. The convertible top is down, and the afternoon sun is hitting them hard, burning off the lingering chill of the ice rink.  
  
Harry pulls up in front of the house and they sit there for a moment, steeling themselves to go back inside.  
  
“If we didn’t live on a dead end, I’d probably just keep on driving,” he says.  
  
“I know the feeling, little brother. But your problems will just follow you.”  
  
“I don’t know, this is a pretty fast car. How was skating?”  
  
“It was a little strange, actually. How was your mystery errand?”  
  
“No mystery,” Harry says. “I just needed some alone time to clear my head.”  
  
“And is it clear now?”  
  
“No. That was just a figure of speech.”  
  
They smile sadly at each other. For some reason sitting there with his little brother, it suddenly occurs to Liam that they will never see their father, the man that couldn’t have children of his own, so he adopted four boys to fulfill his wife’s lifelong dream, again.  
  
Harry and Liam had this ventriloquist/dummy act they used to do for their father. Harry would sit on Liam’s lap and while he was trying to do the routine, Harry would suddenly spin and kiss Liam’s cheek, and then he’d yell at him and Harry would say “sorry” in a high, hoarse cartoon voice, and Simon Kinlan would laugh until his face turned purple.  
  
The boys didn’t know why he found it so funny, but they relished the ability to make him laugh, and so they did it at every possible opportunity. And then, at some point, they didn’t do it anymore. Maybe their father stopped finding it funny, maybe Liam decided he was too old for it, maybe Harry lost interest.  
  
You never know when it will be the last time you’ll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there’s always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you’d never stop grieving.  
  
“Harry,” Liam says.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Your T-shirt is inside out.”  
  
“What? Shit.” He pulls it up over his head. “I must have been wearing it wrong all morning.”  
  
Liam nods slowly, accepting the lie, feeling sad and old and not up to the conversation.  
  
“Stranger things have happened,” Liam says.  
  
  
 ** _3:30 pm  
  
  
_** An unfortunate incident involving uncooked salmon and a vomiting five-year-old effectively clears the house, which frees everyone else to weigh in on the news that Liam is _possibly_ going to be a father.  
  
Charlotte: If it’s a boy, I hope you’ll consider naming him for your father.  
  
Jade: That’s wonderful, Liam. I think you’ll be a great father.  
  
River: Sophia is three months along? She doesn’t even have a baby bump yet. You’d better make sure she’s eating.  
  
Harry: Exactly how old was your professor?  
  
Niall: That’s wonderful, Liam. If you frame this with a positive attitude, it will be the greatest experience of your life.  
  
Louis: This means I might have to rethink my theory that Sophia left you because you’re gay.  
  
Harry: I’m not going to be the youngest anymore.  
  
River: Dumb shit. That’s not how this works.  
  
Harry: Oh.  
  
Charlotte: Presumably, Sophia’s relationship with this professor is intensely sexual. This could very well be the end of them. Her priorities are going to change. You could start fresh.  
  
Erik: Vogue is preparing the documents. We’ll have to massage the booking rates a little bit, but we’ll push it through. Believe me; everyone wants this shoot to happen.  
  
  
 ** _4:20 pm_**  
  
River sits suspended over the water on the far edge of the diving board, flipping through a tabloid magazine, while Liam picks at a platter of pastries on one of the lounge chairs. The sun is just receding beyond the perimeter of the yard, and the mosquitoes haven’t yet emerged. It’s the best time to be outside.  
  
“My God, I’m fat,” River says, looking through pictures of starving starlets. “I’ve been dieting and running every day, and everything in my strike zone still feels like the blob. I won’t even change in front of Erik.”  
  
“I feel like I’ve put on some weight myself,” Liam says, biting into a marzipan-coated petit four.  
  
River looks at him over his sunglasses, critically. “You are looking a little soft in the middle there. You may want to watch that. After all, you’re going to be getting naked in front of new people now.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear.”  
  
River goes back to his magazine.  
  
“I saw Zayn today.” Liam says after a few minutes.  
  
River puts down the magazine. “Zayn Malik? How’d he look?”  
  
“I don’t know. He looked good.”  
  
“Is he married? Divorced? Kids? What?”  
  
“He’s not married. He teaches skating and works evenings at the store.”  
  
“Our store? He worked for Dad?”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“So, Zayn Malik is going to be your rebound. That’s fantastic.”  
  
“No. I just ran into him.”  
  
“Serves him right after the way he led you on in high school.”  
  
“He didn’t lead me on and he’s not going to be my anything. He’s just an old friend.”  
  
“That lad cock-teased you for your entire senior year. And if he didn’t mean anything, then why did you mention it?”  
  
“I’m just making conversation.”  
  
“I’m your brother, squirt. You don’t make conversation with your brother. You wanted to say his name.”  
  
“And now I wish I hadn’t.”  
  
“Oh, grow up. Your girlfriend left you and you haven’t had sex in forever. If I were you, I’d quit beating around the bush. You like Zayn, admit you like him and go for it. Maybe you get somewhere with him, or maybe you get rejected. Either way, you get something.”  
  
“I’ve been with Sophia for more than two years. I’m out of practice.”  
  
“No offense, little brother, but you didn’t exactly have mad skills back in the day.”  
  
“Thanks for the confidence boost.”  
  
“I’m just being honest.”  
  
Jade emerges at the back door. “Your uncle Stan is here. Your mum wants you back in your little chairs.”  
  
“Kill me now,” River says. “Please.”  
  
  
 ** _8:45 pm_**  
  
  
Louis returns from the store, but instead of joining his family in the shiva chairs, he makes his way purposefully through the crowded hallway and disappears up the stairs, to check on Eleanor.  
  
“Why is he off the hook?” Harry grumbles, sounding ten years old.  
  
It’s indiscernible at first, a burst of static and what sounds like a child out of breath, but then Eleanor’s voice can be heard loud and clear through a walkie talkie sitting on the table in the front hall. And what Eleanor says is this:  
  
 _Are you hard yet?  
  
_ There is more panting and a low moan, and then Eleanor says, _Put it in me already.  
  
_ Then a moment of quiet, followed by Eleanor’s short, high-pitched moans and Louis’s grunts as they start to go at it. The visitors, all twenty or so of them, sit shell-shocked, their eyes wide, as Charlotte stops talking and turns toward the walkie talkie.  
  
 _Harder. Fuck me harder,_ Eleanor cries.  
  
 _Quiet!_ Louis grunts.  
  
 _Yes, baby. Come in me. Come now.  
  
_ “I would not have figured Eleanor for a talker,” Harry says. “Nice.”  
  
“I was trying to hear what Harry and Niall were fighting about earlier,” River whispers to Liam. “I guess I forgot to take the other walkie talkie out.”  
  
Harry leans back in his chair and grins widely. “This probably shouldn’t be making me as happy as it is.”  
  
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, people,” Charlotte says sternly. “It’s just sex. You’ve all had it. A few of you might even have some tonight.”  
  
“I know I will,” Stan says, kicking Liam’s leg.  
  
You could hear a pin drop in the living room. That is, if it weren’t for Louis’s escalating grunts and Eleanor urging him— _Come on, come on!_ — over and over again.  
  
“Sexual stamina runs in our family,” Harry explains to the crowd. “This could take a while.”  
  
Jade miraculously appears in the hall and throws the walkie talkie into the hall closet. “Sorry about that, everybody.” It’s unclear if she’s apologizing for what they’ve heard or what they’ll now miss.  
  
“Eleanor is ovulating,” Charlotte explains.  
  
Some of the women nod with understanding while their husbands grin stupidly and look up at the ceiling. The low buzz of hushed conversations slowly returns, like a machine powering up, but a short while later, Louis comes downstairs to sit in his shiva chair and the visitors fall silent, trying not to stare at him. Trying and failing. He looks around the room quizzically, then down at his shirt. He checks his fly.  
  
“What?” he says, looking over at Liam. “What’s going on?”  
  
Before he can answer, Uncle Stan stands up and begins to clap, his large, gnarled hands coming together with the mild clink of pinky rings, a doddering, bent standing ovation of one.  
  
“Sit down before you fall down, old man,” Charlotte says.  
  
Louis looks around one more time, then shrugs.  
  
  
 ** _9:30 pm  
  
_** Zayn shows up as the shiva is winding down for the night.  
  
“Hey,” he says, taking the empty chair in front of Liam’s seat. “I’ve never paid a shiva call before.”  
  
“You’re doing great,” Liam says.  
  
“Some old lady pinched my butt on the stairs as I was coming in. It’s like she wanted to take a piece with her.”  
  
“Hello, Zayn,” Charlotte says.  
  
“Hi, Mrs. Kinlan. I’m so sorry about Simon.”  
  
“Thank you. He was very fond of you.”  
  
“He was such a nice man. We all miss him down at the store.”  
  
“Well, it was very nice of you to come see us.”  
  
“I’m just sorry it’s taken this long. You know we keep the store open until nine in the summer.”  
  
“Zayn is the only one Dad trusted to close up and turn on the alarm,” Louis says.  
  
“It’s not exactly rocket science,” Zayn says, blushing. Then, noticing River, “Oh my God, River! I didn’t recognize you.”  
  
“That’s because, unlike you, I’ve actually had the decency to age. Look at you. I bet they still card you in bars.”  
  
“Hardly,” Zayn says, shifting nervously under River’s unflinching scrutiny.  
  
  
 ** _10:00 pm_**  
  
  
The visitors are all gone, and the house has fallen quiet. Zayn and Liam sit in the dark by the pool’s edge with their feet in the water.  
  
The only light comes from two submerged pool lamps, so all they can see is a fine mist rising up off the heated water.  
  
“So, how are you doing?” Zayn says.  
  
“Fine, I guess. It’s a lot of family time. I think we’re going to need a year off from each other when this is over.”  
  
Zayn nods, tracing little circles in the water with his toes. “I live around the corner from my parents.”  
  
“That’s nice, isn’t it?”  
  
He shrugs. “It can be. God, it’s hot out here.”  
  
“Yeah. It’s been like this all week. Humid as hell.”  
  
“You’d think it would get cooler at night.”  
  
“Yeah. Not lately.”  
  
“Oh God, Leeyum. Listen to us. We’re talking about the weather. Are we avoiding something, or do we simply have nothing to say to each other?”  
  
“Conversation was never a problem for us.”  
  
“Well, then, let’s put a moratorium on small talk, okay?”  
  
“Deal.”  
  
“And for God’s sake, let’s get in the water already.” Zayn stands up, and Liam can’t quite see his eyes, but he knows they’re daring him.  
  
“Turn around,” Zayn says.  
  
He does, and a few seconds later he hears a light splash as Zayn slides into the water. Liam turns around and sees the dark pile of Zayn’s clothes on the ground. Liam pulls off his polo shirt and his jeans. He hesitates for a moment when it comes to his boxer briefs.  
  
To or not to, that is the question.  
  
How did Zayn answer it? In the dim light coming up from the depths of the pool, it’s impossible to say. Liam slides into the pool with his pants on. Better safe than sorry.  
  
Zayn holds on to a rung of the ladder while Liam treads water a foot or so in front of him.  
  
After a few moments, Liam’s eyes have adjusted enough that he can look into Zayn’s.  
  
“I’ve been thinking about you, Li.”  
  
“Me too.”  
  
“Do you think you’d like to kiss me now?”  
  
Liam glides over to Zayn, his hand falling over his on the ladder rung.  
  
“Listen,” Liam says, but then, somehow they’re already kissing, deep and slow, tongues colliding softly, gathering speed.  
  
And Liam thinks that Zayn’s taste is exactly as he remember it, brings him back in an instant to those nights of sweaty dry-humping in Zayn’s basement, and he can feel Zayn’s nipples hard against his chest, fingers gliding up Liam’s back to his neck, pressing against the spot where his spine becomes my skull.  
  
Liam has kissed no one but Sophia in over two years, and they had not kissed like this in a very long time, with gaping mouths and frantic tongues, where kissing is its own kind of sex.  
  
After a while, Zayn stops to catch his breath, gasping a little as he turns around to rest his arms against the edge of the pool.  
  
Liam swims up behind him and puts his hands on either side of Zayn’s arms, pressing his chest against his back. Zayn leans his head back to press his cheek against Liam’s. “That was so nice,” he says.  
  
Liam’s body falls against Zayn’s, and when his erection, straining underwater against his soaked underpants, falls lightly against the curve of Zayn’s ass, he emits a low groan.  
  
“Listen,” Liam says. “There’s something I want to tell you.”  
  
“Tell me tomorrow,” Zayn says, pressing himself hard against Liam. “Just do that now.”


	5. Day 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

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> [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/gho4life/media/Day4_zps39937f44.jpg.html)   
>   
> 

**_5:15 am  
  
  
_** Liam wakes up strangely energized, his stomach growling. Upstairs, the overstocked fridge offers him its bounty of sympathy food. He throws some cheese slices onto a soft bagel and then heads up to the second floor. He hasn’t been up there since he got back.  
  
The bedroom doors are all closed, so there’s really not much to see. He tiptoes up the attic stairs, which creak like a haunted house, and out the access window to the roof, climbing up the slate until he’s sitting at the highest point of the gable.  
  
When Liam was a kid he used to climb up there to look down at the block and gather his thoughts in private. Louis would climb up here with Woody to smoke weed and look at porn, and River would come up to smoke cigarettes. Liam doesn’t know if Harry ever figured out the roof. By the time he was old enough, his siblings were all out of the house.  
  
The block the Kinlan’s house sits on is on a high elevation, so you can see a lot from up on the roof. You can see into backyards for blocks, swimming pools, swing sets, barbecues, and discarded toys. You can see across the rooftops to where the early morning joggers are running on the track behind the soccer pitch in the county park. You can watch the sun come up, coloring the sky white, then pink, then blue.  
  
You can see Liam’s oldest brother, barefoot in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, walking hurriedly up the block from the direction of the Grimshaw’s, running his hand through his mussed hair as he goes, and wonder what he might be doing coming from there at this hour.  
  
And then, just minutes after he’s let himself in below, you can observe Jade leaving Liam’s childhood home to quietly make her way down the block back to her house. It would probably help to see Jade’s expression, but her back is to Liam, so he can only guess at it. Liam ponders these two people, who miss each other by a matter of minutes, walking exactly opposite routes as quietly as the dew now dropping in a mist on the grass, and Liam hazards any number of guesses as to what business they might be tending to in the soft focus of these hushed morning hours when the day is taking its first tentative breaths. Liam sits up there, feeling above it all while knowing he’s not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing he can ever really know about anyone is that he doesn’t know anything about them at all.  
  
  
 ** _6:45 am  
  
  
_** Liam steps out of the shower into pitch darkness. By now this has become routine. Wrapped in a towel, he walks across the basement to the circuit breaker. But this time, when he flips the switch, there is a crackle of electricity, a flash of blue light, and he is blown out of his towel and backward across the room, where he lands flat on his back, poised on the precipice of unconsciousness. Liam’s body tingles with electricity, and he can feel every molecule in him, thrumming in harmony. He closes his eyes and…  
  
… He is three years old and riding his red plastic motorcycle in the park. It’s cold out, he’s wearing a navy blue ski hat, and his nose is running copiously into his scarf.  
  
The plastic wheels of the motorcycle clatter loudly against the cracked asphalt as he pushes off with his feet to propel myself around an Olympic-sized sandbox.  
  
Suddenly, a kid appears in his path, tall and fat, two lines of snot running equilaterally down from his nose to the corners of his mouth. He holds a gray milk crate over his head like the Ten Commandments.  
  
“The Hulk!” he screams at Liam. He doesn’t know what he means. He’s years away from Marvel comics, and even once he discovers them, _The Incredible Hulk_ will never make sense to him. Liam is three years old, and has never heard of _The Incredible Hulk,_ but this kid clearly relates to him intimately. And maybe he’s pretending the milk crate is a car, or a house, or a large boulder, or an archenemy. Whatever it’s supposed to be, it hurts like hell when it hits Liam’s face.  
  
And then he’s off the motorcycle, lying on his side, the grit of the cold asphalt biting into his cheek. His nose and mouth are bleeding, and he’s coughing and spitting and crying, gagging on blood.  
  
And then he’s lifted up into the air by powerful arms, lifted high above the fat kid and the plastic motorcycle and the earth, really, his face pressed into his savior’s large shoulder, which is somehow hard and soft at the same time. Liam bleeds into the fuzz of his peacoat as he rubs his back and says, “It’s okay, bubble. You’re okay. Everything’s fine.”  
  
And then he stands Liam up on a bench and pulls out a handkerchief to softly wipe away the blood. “That little bastard really nailed you,” he says, gently picking Liam up again. Liam doesn’t know what a little bastard is, he doesn’t know who the Hulk is, he doesn’t remember what exactly happened, but his father is holding him safely above the fray, and he’s burrowed hard into his powerful chest and Liam’s aware of the fat kid somewhere down below, but he knows the little bastard can’t reach him up there.  
  
  
 ** _6:50 am  
  
  
_** Liam comes to with his mother’s worried face hovering over him.  
  
“Li,” she says softly. “Just stay there for a moment, yeah?”  
  
There are deep shadows under her eyes, and at this angle, the gray roots of her hair frame the upper half of her face. She looks tired and old, and Liam feels a surge of tenderness toward her.  
  
“He called me bubble,” he says.  
  
“What, dear?”  
  
“When I was little. Pop used to call me bubble.”  
  
Charlotte looks at him and smiles. “I remember,” she says, rubbing Liam’s chest.  
  
“You’re crying,” he says.  
  
“So are you.”  
  
And now Liam can feel the abundant wetness on his face, and she comes in and out of focus as he blinks through fresh tears. “I miss him,” he says, and something inside of him breaks.  
  
And then Charlotte lets out an anguished cry and drops her head to sob into his chest while he cries into the brittle tangle of her hair, and they stay like that for a long while.  
  
  
 ** _8:00 am  
  
  
_** This being Saturday, the laws of shiva are suspended, and all outward signs of mourning put aside in honor of the Sabbath. Woody stops by to give the Kinlans the news. He is dressed in a dark suit with a black shirt and looks ready to go out clubbing.  
  
“You are still in mourning, of course,” he says. “But there will be no visitors today, no outward observance of shiva.”  
  
“So, it’s like a day off,” River says.  
  
“Not quite,” he says. He looks at Charlotte, who nods, and then looks back at them. “This morning, you’ll all come to temple to say Kaddish at morning services.”  
  
“Kaddish?” Harry.  
  
“The prayer for the soul of the departed.”  
  
“Why can’t we say it here?” Louis says.  
  
“Kaddish is said responsively. It can only be said with a minyan, a quorum of at least ten men present to respond.”  
  
Louis looks at his childhood friend exasperatedly. _Give me a break!_ But Woody just looks back and shrugs. _I don’t make the rules.  
  
_ Louis blinks first. “When do services start?”

Woody checks his watch. “In twenty-five minutes. You’d better get dressed.”  
  
  
 ** _8:20 am_**  
  
  
The suit Liam wore to the funeral has been lying on the basement floor in a crumpled heap ever since, so Charlotte brings him up to her bedroom and picks out one of his father’s suits for him. Simon only ever wore two kinds of suits: midnight blue and black. When Liam tries on the black one Charlotte has chosen it fits perfectly, except for the slacks being an inch or so too short.  
  
  
 ** _9:30 am  
  
  
_** Kaddish is only said by the immediate family of the deceased, so Erik, Niall, and Eleanor have all opted out of the trip, and who could blame them? The Kinlans arrive at temple an hour late, but Woody has reserved a row of pews for them.  
  
They can feel all eyes in the cavernous room on them as they make their way down the aisle, the Kinlan boys feeling awkward in their flimsy black yarmulkes and tattered prayer shawls borrowed from the rack in the hall, which they wear slung over their shoulders like scarves.  
  
Woody wears a long white prayer shawl with bits of silver trim around the collar that jingle like chain mail. He descends like a spirit from his high seat on the front platform to dramatically hug each one of them as they enter the pew. This seems gratuitous to Liam, as they all saw each other an hour earlier, like when talk show hosts warmly greet their guests even though they’ve obviously talked backstage before the show.  
  
“I’d like to take a moment to welcome the Kinlan family to our temple. As many of you know, Simon Kinlan passed away a few days ago. His wife, Charlotte, and his children, Louis, Liam, River, and Harry, are here to say Kaddish for him and mark his passing before God and before the community. Simon was a well-respected businessman; many of us grew up getting our records and renting band instruments at Kinlan’s. On a personal note, I spent a good part of my childhood in the Kinlan home, playing football with Louis and Liam—”  
  
“Smoking weed,” Liam whispers.  
  
“Jerking off.” Louis.  
  
“Trying to touch Mom’s boobs.” River.  
  
“… and he leaves behind this legacy, his work ethic and his uncompromising values, for his children to carry on. May the Lord comfort the family among the mourners of Zion.”  
  
“Amen,” the crowd responds.  
  
“I’d like to call Charlotte and her children up to the bimah now, to say Kaddish for their beloved husband and father, Simon Kinlan.”  
  
Charlotte stands up first and strides down the aisle in her stiletto heels like it’s a runway, garnering appreciative glances from the older men in the crowd, including Mr. Grimsby, who shamelessly watches her ass the entire way down.  
  
“She couldn’t find a longer skirt for temple?” River mutters.  
  
The siblings Kinlan follow her up to the bimah, a raised table at the front of the room, where the cantor hands each of them a laminated sheet with the words of the Kaddish written in Hebrew and then transliterated in English. “Just read it slowly and pause at the dashes for the responses,” he says. “You’ll be fine.”  
  
“Okay, everyone,” Louis says. “On three?”  
  
They read off the ancient words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they don’t understand either. They are gathered together on a Saturday morning to speak gibberish to each other, and one would think, in these godless times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn’t.  
  
The five of them, huddled together shoulder to shoulder over the bimah, read the words aloud slowly, and the congregation, these old friends and acquaintances and strangers, all respond, and for reasons no one can begin to articulate, it feels like something is actually happening. It’s got nothing to do with God or souls, just the palpable sense of goodwill and support emanating in waves from the pews around us, and Liam can’t help but be moved by it.  
  
When they reach the end of the page, and the last “amen” has been said, Liam feels sorry that it’s over. He could stay up here a while longer. And as they step down to make their way back to the pews, a quick survey of the sadness in his family’s wet eyes tells Liam that he’s not the only one who feels that way.  
  
  
 ** _10:15 am  
  
  
_** As the cantor drones on, Liam sticks his hand into the pocket of his father’s suit and discovers what feels like an old, twisted tissue but turns out, upon further inspection, to be a very fat, home-rolled joint.  
  
Liam palms the joint, holds it out over Harry’s lap, and discreetly shows it to him. The only thing wider than his eyes is his smile. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he says. He stands up and heads up the aisle. A few minutes later, Liam follows. The bathroom smells of powdered crotch, so they push open the double fire doors and head down the darkened hallways of the Beit Shvidler Primary School. Harry finds an unlocked classroom and they sit down in miniature chairs, still wrapped in their prayer shawls.  
  
“Where’d you get the doobage?” Harry says.  
  
“It was in Pop’s suit.”  
  
“Pop was a stoner?” Harry says. “So much about my life makes sense now.”  
  
“Shut up. It was probably medicinal. They prescribe it for cancer patients.”  
  
“I prefer to think that every once in a while Pop just liked to toke up and consider the universe.”  
  
“Think what you want, just light the fucker.”  
  
A few moments later, they’re sprawled at they’re tiny attached desks, while the three-dimensional letters of the Hebrew alphabet taped above the blackboard float over them in a smoky haze.  
  
“I miss him,” Harry says.  
  
“I do too.”  
  
“I feel very alone. Like when I mess up now, he won’t be there to help me.”  
  
“I guess we’re officially adults now.”  
  
“Fuck that,” Harry says, taking an extra-long pull on the joint. He blows out a perfect ring and then blows a jet of smoke through it. When it comes to worthless frat-boy skills, Harry is second to none. He can light a match with his thumbnail, open a beer bottle with his teeth, flip a cigarette from the carton to his mouth with a flick of his wrist, play the _William Tell_ overture by flicking his fingers against the soft underside of his jaw, burp _God Save the Queen_ , dislocate his shoulder upon request.  
  
“Do you think maybe that’s why you’re with Niall?” Liam inquires. “Because you want to know there’s someone looking after you?”  
  
Harry lazily passes Liam the joint. “I don’t know, but I like that theory”  
  
The door to the classroom flies open. “What the hell?” Louis says. “Oh. Christ.”  
  
“In or out,” Liam says.  
  
“I should have known.” He steps into the room, closing the door behind him.  
  
“We learned from the master,” Harry says.  
  
“Give it here.” Louis takes a drag and sits down in one of the chairs. “Damn! That is some strong shit. Where’d you get it?”  
  
“Dad,” Liam says, indicating the blazer. “A gift from the beyond.”  
  
“I wouldn’t have pegged Pop for a fan of the weed.”  
  
“People can change,” Harry says.  
  
“People are who they are,” Louis says, leaning back in his little chair to take another generous drag. “I really miss him,” he says.  
  
“Me too,” Liam says.  
  
“Me three.” Harry.  
  
A ray of sunlight comes through the window, passing through the thick cloud of smoke in a way that makes you think of God and heaven, and they sit there getting baked in their skullcaps and prayer shawls, three brothers in mourning, the full impact of their loss only now beginning to dawn on them.  
  
“I love you guys,” Harry says, just as the smoke alarm goes off and the sprinklers come on.  
  
  
 ** _10:30 am  
  
  
_** Fortunately, the sprinklers in the sanctuary are in a different zone and must be set off independently, so the worshippers do not get soaked as they evacuate the building. In the classroom, though, the water rains down on three of the Kinlan boys as Harry grabs what’s left of the joint, still lit, and swallows it whole, with the confidence of someone for whom joint swallowing is a routine practice.  
  
The sprinklers have also been activated in the hallway, and they run through the indoor storm, stopping at the fire doors that lead to the lobby area. Peering through the narrow vertical windows of the door, they can see the crowd moving through the lobby and out the glass doors to the synagogue’s front lawn.  
  
“Just act casual,” Louis says. “Blend in.”  
  
It seems easy enough, only because they’re too stoned to realize that three men dripping in their suits might stand out.  
  
The air-conditioning is cold against Liam’s wet clothes. They discard their soaked prayer shawls and join the crowd moving out the doors and soon find themselves standing in the parking lot, being warmed by the late-morning sun.  
  
“What did you do?” Charlotte shouts, her heels clattering on the asphalt as she storms over to them. River follows behind her, enjoying every second of it.  
  
“Nothing,” Harry says. “It was a false alarm.”  
  
“Look at the three of you!”  
  
“You guys smell like a dorm room,” River says, wrinkling up his nose.  
  
“You got high at temple?” Their mother says, outraged.  
  
“Of course not.” Louis.

“No.” Liam.

“Who’s hungry?” Harry.  
  
In the distance, they can hear the wail of the fire trucks.  
  
“Ah, shit,” Louis says.  
  
Charlotte leans against a car, exasperated. “I blame myself.”  
  
“That’s a relief,” Liam says. “Now can we get out of here?”  
  
But just then Woody emerges from the crowd and comes striding purposefully over to the Kinlans, brow furrowed, face flushed with anger. “What the hell, Lou?” he demands.  
  
Louis shrugs. “False alarm, I guess.”  
  
“And you three are the only ones who got wet.”  
  
“It’s been that kind of week,” Liam says.  
  
Woody steps right up into Louis’s face. “I smell weed.”  
  
“You would know.”  
  
The two childhood friends stare each other down for a moment and then look away. The rules have changed. Woody sighs. “You guys should get out of here before the cops show up.”  
  
“That’s a great idea,” River says. “Come on, Mum. I’ll drive.”  
  
“Thanks buddy,” Louis says, smacking Boner’s shoulder.  
  
“Just go.”  
  
“Thanks for everything,” Liam says, shaking his hand.  
  
“Yeah, thanks, Woody,” Harry says.  
  
Woody gives Harry a withering look. “That was the last time you call me Woody, you hear me?”  
  
Harry looks at Liam, and he shakes his head. _Don’t do it.  
  
_ “I’m sorry, Woody.”  
  
Woody lunges at Harry, but Louis catches him and turns him around, whispering in his ear, while Liam drags Harry toward Charlotte’s car. “Jesus, Harold. Grow up, would you?”  
  
“I gotta be me,” he says, snickering.  
  
River looks over the roof of their mother’s car and smiles cheerfully at them. “You guys are so going to hell.”  
  
  
 ** _12:30 pm  
  
  
_** Liam’s not sure why he does it, maybe he’s still high, maybe he’s feeling vengeful, but he goes to the bank and withdraws all the money from his and Sophia’s joint checking account.  All sixteen thousand pounds of it.  
  
And then for more reasons he’ll never comprehend, he agrees to meet Sophia for drinks at her hotel later in the afternoon.  
  
  
 ** _1:15 pm  
  
  
_** There are dark shadows under Sophia’s bloodshot eyes, and she nervously stirs her glass of ginger ale in the hotel bar, situated in a recessed portion of the hotel lobby. The only other patrons are a group of flight attendants a few tables over. There is a wedding this evening at the Marriott, and the lobby hums with industry as vendors scurry around in a state of controlled chaos. Sophia is nauseous and exhausted and wants to talk about their relationship.  
  
“Yesterday was the first time you’ve asked me anything related to us,” she says.  
  
“We don’t talk very often.”  
  
“I know. But if this baby turns out to be yours, we’re going to be parents, Liam, and I think we’re going to have to get better at talking to each other.”

“So this baby is your free pass, is that it?”  
  
She offers a grin. “I know it sucks, but yes. You’re going to have to come to some kind of terms with me so that we can work together here.”  
  
“You can’t even say for sure that this baby is mine. So, no, I don’t want to work with you, Sophia.”  
  
She puts down her glass and looks at me. “What does that mean, exactly?”  
  
“I didn’t want this baby. I once wanted a baby with you, but that was before I knew who you really were. This baby… Doesn’t feel real to me. It doesn’t feel like mine any more than you do.”  
  
Sophia studies her drink for a long time, and when she looks back up at Liam, her eyes are filled with tears.  
  
“I think that may be the most wretched thing you’ve ever said to me.”  
  
“You wanted me to talk about it. I’m talking.”  
  
Liam doesn’t remember what he just said, and he has no idea if he even meant it. He just knows he wanted it to hurt.  
  
In the day or so he’s known that Sophia was pregnant, he has managed to avoid doing any concrete thinking about it. It’s still completely unreal to him, but if he said that to Sophia, she would nod sympathetically and keep talking about being parents together, and Liam’s got a splitting headache as it is. The fragments of his fractured life are spinning in his head like a buzz saw, and he feels moments away from coming apart in a very real and permanent way.  
  
“I can’t do this.”  
  
“Please don’t leave,” she says, but Liam is already moving, weaving through the tables to get out of there. The last thing he hears her say is “This isn’t going to go away.” And it’s that very fact, obvious though it may be, that squeezes the air from his lungs and makes him run. Because, more than anything, what he wants is for it to go away.  
  
  
 ** _2:00 pm  
  
  
_** Liam is home, for lack of a better word, or option. He can smell barbecue. He follows the sounds of voices around to the backyard. Everyone is gathered on the patio eating, while Erik mans the grill. River is sprawled on a lounge chair. Everyone else is at the table, eating burgers and minute steaks, dipping crisps and washing them down with Diet Coke.  
  
Charlotte and Jade are at the head of the table, sipping chardonnay out of plastic wineglasses and playing cards. Liam stands around the corner of the house, watching these people, these strangers, this family of his, and he has never felt more lost and alone. His cell phone vibrates softly in his pocket, and he steps back around the house to answer it.  
  
“Hey,” Zayn says. “Want to go to a movie?”  
  
  
 ** _2:45 pm  
  
  
_** Zayn and Liam sit in the back row, holding hands. Zayn softly runs the fingers of his free hand up and down the inside of Liam’s forearm, playing with the short hairs on his wrist. Liam leans his head against Zayn’s, and they’re seventeen again.  
  
They make out for a while, their tongues cool and sugary from the soda, and Liam never wants the movie to end, not because it feels so good, although it certainly does—Zayn kisses with passion and depth and just the right amount of tongue—but because when the movie ends the house lights will come back up, and real life will materialize around them like hidden creatures in the horror movie they should have gone to instead.  
  
And even as they kiss, Liam’s hand now under the hem of Zayn’s shirt, Zayn’s fingers in Liam’s hair as his tongue dances across Liam’s lower lip, Liam is aware of the on-screen plot resolving itself.  
  
Next to him, Zayn sniffles at the happy ending. Then he leans over, takes Liam’s earlobe between his teeth, and says, “Take me home.”  
  
  
 ** _5:00 pm_**  
  
  
Zayn lives in a ground-floor apartment in a complex downtown, just a few blocks from the Kinlan’s store. There are framed posters on the walls—Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley, Nirvana—and not very much in the way of furniture: a mucous-green leather couch that he must have gotten a deal on because no one would choose that color. There’s no matching love seat.  
  
Liam’s nervous. He has not had sex with anyone other than Sophia in over two years. But when your girlfriend spent the last year of your relationship going elsewhere for her sexual gratification, it’s only natural to have some performance anxiety.  
  
Zayn steps into the apartment, tossing keys and flipping off lights. Liam stands uncertainly in the doorway. “Should I come in?” he says. His voice sounds hollow and scared.  
  
Zayn gives him a sharp, knowing smile. “If I were you, I would.”  
  
The bedroom is a mess, clothes everywhere, towels draped over an armchair to dry. Zayn undresses in the light of the desk lamp, not sultry, but the same way he would if Liam wasn’t there, letting his clothing fall where he stands. Zayn presents himself to Liam, his body lithe. Liam is self-conscious about his own body, but Zayn doesn’t seem to mind, kissing his thighs as he pulls down Liam’s trousers and then falling down onto the bed with him, licking his way up Liam’s belly to his chin and then into his mouth. “You taste good,” Zayn murmurs.  
  
The sex is as good and bad as first times tend to be, like a play rehearsal full of missed marks, botched lines, bad lighting, and no calls for an encore.  
  
They don’t do it up against the wall, on the kitchen sink, in the shower. It’s just paint-by-numbers sex: kiss, rub, lick, stroke, enter, rock, moan, and come, all at the proper time. Liam’s playing scared, letting Zayn set the rhythm, trying his best to banish the image of his professor humping Sophia that hovers in the background of his mind.  
  
When they’re done, Liam rolls off of Zayn, feeling ridiculously accomplished and wondering if he should just leave.  
  
“That was nice,” Zayn says drowsily, throwing a leg over Liam’s, splaying out his fingers against Liam’s chest. Zayn laughs. “Liam Kinlan. Naked in my bed. This is beyond surreal.”  
  
“Surreal is my new reality.”  
  
Zayn kisses both Liam’s eyes and wraps his arms around him in a way that brings Liam dangerously close to tears. He should tell Zayn about the maybe-baby. It’s on the tip of his tongue.  
  
“Liam Kinlan.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing. I just like to say your name.”

Zayn pulls Liam closer and burrows his head into the crook of his neck, lazily repeating Liam’s name a few more times as he drifts off to sleep. Liam opens his mouth to say any number of things, but in the end he just lies there.  
  
  
 ** _11:30 pm_**  
  
  
River and Erik are standing on the front walk, having an argument. River gesticulates wildly while Erik stands there absorbing it, swatting away gnats as he waits his husband out. Liam wonders why they stay together, what it is they offer each other that keeps them locked in this bloodless stalemate.  
  
“I’m sorry, babe, it’s the eleventh hour,” Erik is saying. “I need to be there to shoot this collection now, or it’s all going to go up in smoke.”  
  
“You’ve had a death in the family. Can’t they understand that?”  
  
“Yes, but I can’t be gone for seven days. They need me there.”  
  
“And what about your family? I need you too.”  
  
“I’m doing this for you.”  
  
“Right. That old load of crap.”  
  
They fall silent when Liam steps out of the car.  
  
“Where the hell have you been?” River says.  
  
“Clearing my head.”  
  
“You didn’t tell anyone where you were going.”  
  
“There’s actually a good reason for that.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I didn’t want to.”  
  
Erik snickers. Wrong move. River turns on him with a baleful stare, and Liam uses the distraction to slide past them and into the house.  
  
Charlotte and Jade are in the living room, playing Scrabble at the coffee table and drinking tea. Louis, Eleanor, and Niall are on the couch watching Jon Stewart, while Harry sits on the floor, thumbing through a shoebox of old photos.  
  
They all look up at Liam.  
  
“Where have you been?” Charlotte says.  
  
“Out and about.”  
  
“Don’t be evasive. Just say you’d rather not tell me.”  
  
“I’d rather not tell you.”  
  
“But now you have me curious. Did you see Sophia today?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And now I’m going to bed.”  
  
“Look at this picture,” Harry says.  
  
Liam squats down to see the photo Harry’s holding. Liam is around eight, Louis is ten, and Harry is four years old. Louis and Liam are throwing him to each other, playing catch with their little brother in the very living room they are now in, twenty-something years ago.  
  
Harry loved that, would laugh hysterically, his eyes wide with excitement as they launched him airborne at each other. _Pay catch, Lee. Pay catch, Lo.  
  
_ They are all smiling in the picture, three brothers having a grand old time just playing around in the living room, no agendas, no buried resentments or permanent scars.  
  
“Look here,” Harry says, pointing to the corner of the photo. “In the breakfront.”  
  
The breakfront has two sets of glass doors, behind which Charlotte keeps her crystal glasses and the good china.  
  
“I don’t see anything.”  
  
“Look at the glass on the last door.”  
  
Liam stares at the picture and then, just as he’s about to give up, he sees it, a reflection in the glass, a face and arms. Simon Kinlan, watching them from off camera, smiling widely as Harry flies between them. The breakfront still stands against the living room wall, and Liam looks into the glass doors a moment. When he looks back down Harry is smiling at him.  
  
“I did the same thing.”  
  
“He’s like a ghost,” Liam says.  
  
“Last night I woke up and thought I saw him walking out of the study,” Harry says.  
  
Harry watches Liam as he stands back up and head for the basement.  
  
“Li.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
He grins. “You smell like sex.”


	6. Day 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> [ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/gho4life/media/Day5_zpsc1bd9cf8.jpg.html)   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kinda rough...

**_5:30 am  
  
  
_** Up on top of the house. Looking over miles of roof; slate, concrete, copper, clay, all bathed in the glow of the sun rising. There’s a bird chirping in the branch of a tree.   
  
Liam used to know things like that, the names of birds and trees. Now it feels like he doesn’t know much of anything. He doesn’t know how he and Sophia became strangers in their relationship.   
  
He thinks about Sophia. He thinks about Zayn. He could probably have something substantial with Zayn, but he’d always be so afraid that the same thing would happen to him and Zayn that happened between him and Sophia. So what does he do?  
  
There are just too many things he doesn’t know.  
  
There’s a scraping sound behind him, and River climbs onto the roof, still groggy with sleep.  
  
“Hey there.”  
  
“Good morning.”  
  
He stands beside Liam and reaches into the chimney for a second, his hand emerging with a box of Camels and a lighter. “Want one?”  
  
“No, thanks.”  
  
“Mind if I do?”

Liam doesn’t answer because it wouldn’t matter.   
  
River lights up, inhaling so deeply that Liam can picture his brother’s lungs inflating and darkening with smoke. “So, Erik’s getting the hell out of Dodge.”  
  
“Where to?”  
  
“Everywhere. California, Chicago, Paris. Apparently everything depends on getting this photo shoot done.”  
  
“Are you worried?”  
  
He shrugs. “It’s Erik. This is what he does. If I worried, that would defeat the whole purpose of being married to him.” He takes another drag on his cigarette. “So, you slept with Sophia last night?”  
  
“Zayn.”  
  
“Oh! Good for you. Right?”  
  
“I feel like I’ll never be able to have sex with someone new without thinking the whole time about the fact that I’m having sex with someone new.”  
  
River shrugs. “You’ll get over it.”  
  
From below comes the sound of the front door closing, and a moment later Jade crosses the front yard. She stops on the sidewalk and turns her face up to the sky, letting the morning breeze kiss her face, before heading down the block toward her house.  
  
“She’s here early,” River muses.  
  
“She’s here late,” Liam says.  
  
“Oh,” River says. Then, “Oh! No!”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
“No way! You think?”  
  
“Nothing surprises me anymore.”   
  
There’s quiet moment while River processes the new information.  
  
“It kind of makes sense, a little,” he says.  
  
“Kind of.”  
  
“If so, how do we feel about it?”  
  
“We are numb.”  
  
River considers that for a moment, tapping his lip with the end of the cigarette. “Yes. That’s a perfect description of what we are.”  
  
“You slept with Nick Grimshaw.”  
  
“He told you?”  
  
“I was up here yesterday morning too. Saw you do the walk of shame.”  
  
He shrugs. “It’s no big deal.”  
  
“It’s adultery.”  
  
River raises his eyebrows at Liam, biting back whatever it was he was prepared to say, a rare display of restraint. They are perched on a roof and they can’t be too careful.  
  
“Grimmy is grandfathered in.”  
  
“Is that how it works?”  
  
“That’s how it works.”  
  
“That makes half of your graduating class eligible.”  
  
He laughs and stubs out his cigarette on a roof shingle. “In an alternate universe where I didn’t go backpacking through Paris and didn’t meet Erik, Nick and I are married. Once in a blue moon I get to visit that universe.”  
  
“And it’s really that simple.”  
  
“My alternate universe, my rules.”  
  
Behind and below them, the back door slams. They turn around to look down into the backyard. Niall is standing at the head of the pool in black swim trunks. His dive is flawless, his stroke strong and graceful. He swims back and forth with machinelike precision, doing those little somersaults against the wall at each end like he’s in the Olympics. Liam gets tired just looking at him.  
  
“Think Haz is gonna go through with marrying him?” River asks.  
  
Liam shrugs watching Niall slice through the water like a shark.  
  
  
 ** _1:30 pm  
  
  
_** The house is filled to near capacity. Everyone the Kinlans ever knew in their lives, pouring through the doors out of a sense of friendship, duty, community, or simply to secure reciprocation when it comes their turn to mourn.  
  
Because more time has elapsed since the funeral and people are less worried about the appropriateness of it all, because there are apparently a lot of single women out there, because Charlotte has clearly put the word out, because Liam’s sitting there on display for all to see, because there is a premium placed on a single man without kids and no one there knows any better yet, and because some women of a certain age seem to think it’s their God-given right to act as brokers in affairs of the heart, the matchmakers are out in full force today.  
  
Mrs. Lloyd wants to set Liam up with her daughter Cher, who—and she is emphatic on this point—could have married any number of the many boyfriends she had, if only she weren’t so driven in her career. Cher is now a vice president at PepsiCo, makes more money than she knows what to do with, and is finally ready to consider appropriate suitors. And for all Liam knows, Cher Lloyd might be his soul mate, or at least a bright, attractive woman with the body of a centerfold. But Mrs. Lloyd’s hair is dyed a different shade of blond than her eyebrows, and her skin hangs off her jaw in loose jowls with the texture of an orange peel, and when she speaks of Cher in her hoarse smoker’s voice, she sucks all traces of potential sexuality right out of her. Right out of the world, actually.  
  
Mrs. Scherzinger’s ex-husband has a stepdaughter who is a catalog model. She is divorced once and widowed once, but you’d never know it from her great attitude. She’s currently writing a book on what to do when you’re beautiful but your life sucks anyway, and she lives in Los Angeles, but the world is so much smaller these days.  
  
Perrie Edwards is a certified matchmaker and she wants Liam to avoid the dangerous pitfalls of online dating by hiring her to find and screen potential dates. Liam wonders what organization certifies matchmakers, what the criteria are, and, more immediately, how a sixty-something woman who wears leopard-print spandex pants and bubblegum-pink lipstick to a Sunday-afternoon shiva call can possibly expect to be taken seriously as an arbiter of good taste.  
  
“So, you’ll call me?” Perrie says, pressing her card into Liam’s palm.  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“No. Not really.”  
  
Perrie looks at me uncertainly.  
  
“He’s kidding.” Charlotte.  
  
“No, I’m not.”  
  
“He’s not.” River.  
  
“He’s serious as a heart attack.” Harry.

“I’m sorry,” Perrie says, sounding more pissed than sorry. “I was just trying to help.”  
  
Liam looks at Perrie Edwards, and Mrs. Scherzinger, and Mrs. Lloyd. They are smug and clueless and riding Liam’s last nerve. “I have been single less than a week,” Liam says, raising his voice to the point that all the other hushed conversations going on around the room die instantly. “I have only been single less than a week, I might have a baby on the way and I’m dealing with the death of my father, and this pathological need you all have to throw every sad lonely woman you know at me is not helping.”  
  
“Okay, Liam,” Charlotte says.  
  
“Do I really look so pathetic to all of you? Like I couldn’t possibly meet someone on my own? There are a lot of people in the world. Odds are that at least a few of them would be willing to go out with me.”   
  
“Damn right,” Harry chimes in. “And it’s not like he’s been celibate since he left her. He had sex last night, FYI.”  
  
“Don’t help me, Harry.”  
  
“Right. Sorry.”  
  
Perrie, Mrs. Scherzinger, and Mrs. Lloyd rise to their feet as one, lips pursed, faces burning with humiliation. They offer a chorus of mortified apologies in low, strained voices as they make their way out of the room.   
  
Liam estimates it will take them roughly three minutes to convert their shame to indignation. They’ll blame the whole thing on his bad manners, benevolently excuse him on the grounds of his grief, and live to meddle another day. They couldn’t have made it this far without developing some fairly foolproof defense mechanisms.  
  
“Don’t worry about it, girls,” Charlotte calls after them. “You were just being kind. It’s not you he’s angry at.”  
  
“No, I’m pretty sure it is them.” River snickers.   
  
Charlotte fixes Liam with a hard look, and then leans back in her chair. “Well, I can see you’re beginning to vent all that anger you have locked up in you, and that’s healthy. I just think you could be a little more sensible in choosing your venue. There are a lot of innocent bystanders here.”  
  
“You always encouraged us to express ourselves in the moment. To let it out.”  
  
“That’s right, honey. I also encouraged you to move your bowels twice a day. That doesn’t mean I want to be there when you do.” She nods to herself for a moment. “That was good, the whole venting-your-waste metaphor. I need to write that down.” She pulls herself up off the chair, making a quick apology to what’s left of her audience, and exits stage left, through the kitchen to the study.  
  
  
 ** _1:45 pm  
  
  
_** After his little outburst, Liam is deemed unfit for shiva, so he is relegated to the backyard until later that evening. He’s not really in the mood to be alone, so he calls for reinforcements.   
  
“I’ve been banished from sitting shiva. Want to come over?” He says when Zayn picks up.  
  
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of commitment,” he says.  
  
Zayn is at the Kinlan house in less than ten minutes.   
  
Liam thinks Zayn could be his boyfriend. They could go out to the amusement park, where they’d kiss on the queues, hold hands on the rides, and share cotton candy. Liam would win him one of those giant stuffed animals and they’d carry it around the park with them like a badge of honor. Afterward it would take up permanent residence on Zayn’s bedspread, where he’d lie across it while they talked for hours on end.  
  
Seeing Zayn fills Liam up and breaks his heart all at once.  
  
“I’m glad you called,” he says, collapsing onto the grass next to Liam.  
  
“So am I.”  
  
An hour or two later, Liam and Zayn are laid across the grass next to the pool. There’s a local rock band playing loud covers on the public radio station in the background. Liam leans over and kisses Zayn. He rests his head on Liam’s shoulder.   
  
“Can I stay with you tonight?” Zayn says.  
  
Zayn is beautiful. Not smoldering, but pretty and sexy and witty and fun. And he has the added distinction of seeming to genuinely like Liam.  
  
A few minutes later Liam’s cell phone rings and it’s Sophia. “I lost the baby,” she says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“The baby. Liam… It’s gone, I lost it.” She’s not crying. Not yet.  
  
“Are you ok? Do we need to call an ambulance to take you to hospital?”  
  
“I guess you’re free and clear of me now.” Liam can hear the tears in her voice now.  
  
“Don’t be like that!” Liam snaps. “I may not have wanted that baby to be mine, but I’m not completely heartless.”

Liam is suddenly very conscious of Zayn listening to him on the phone with Sophia.  
  
“Goodbye Liam.”  
  
The call is ended.

“So, your ex-girlfriend was pregnant. Was it yours?” Zayn’s voice is completely even. Almost scarily so.  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
“That seems like a pretty important piece of information to have shared, maybe.”  
  
“I know. I’m sorry. I was still processing it all.”  
  
Liam grabs Zayn’s hand and moves to go inside to share the bittersweet news with his family, but Zayn stays put.  
  
“I think I’m gonna go,” he says.  
  
“What?”  
  
Zayn shrugs. “Unless you need my help telling them.”  
  
“What? No. I mean, I don’t want you to leave.”  
  
“It’s ok, I just remembered something I have to do.”  
  
“Okay. I’ll call you later.”  
  
Zayn shakes his head and smiles sadly. “I don’t think you will, Liam Kinlan.” He steps forward and kisses Liam’s cheek. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”  
  
“Zayn.”  
  
“I have to go.”  
  
Liam watches as Zayn disappears around the house and possibly out of his life.  
  
Liam marches through the house, not speaking or making eye contact with anyone as he goes.  He’s down in the basement before he even realizes he is crying.  
  
He falls on to that stupid sofa bed, pulls his phone out, and thumbs through his contacts until he reaches the bottom.  
  
Sniffling he types out a short message to Zayn.  
  
 _Please come back_ is all it says.  
  
There is no response by the time Liam cries himself to sleep.  
  
  
 ** _6:15 pm  
  
  
_** Liam wakes up with a throbbing headache. He climbs the stairs to the main floor to find his siblings sitting in their shiva chairs, staring at the kitchen door. Charlotte and Jade are having a fight. They are in the kitchen, arguing in hushed tones.   
  
Liam can’t be sure, but it sounds like Jade’s crying. A fist pounds the counter. A cabinet door slams. There are no visitors right now, this being the dinner hour, but there is no dinner right now, since none of them will dare enter the kitchen.   
  
More low voices.   
  
Then Jade storms down the hall and out the front door, slamming it behind her hard enough to rattle the light bulbs in their sconces. A minute later Charlotte comes out, still composing herself, and sinks down into her shiva chair. Her children all look at her expectantly.   
  
“What?” she says. “We had an argument.”  
  
“What about?” River says.  
  
“About none of your business.” She stands up and heads for the stairs. “I think I feel a migraine coming on. I’m going to go lie down for a bit.”  
  
“Hey,” River shouts, stopping her at the foot of the stairs. “What happened to a family with no secrets?”  
  
Charlotte nods to herself, holding on to the banister for support. When she turns to them, there are tears in her eyes. “It’s been such a long time since we were really a family,” she says.  
  
 ** _  
7:45 pm  
  
  
_** It’s a night for lovers’ tiffs. Eleanor is pissed at Louis for spending more time at the store than with her. She is berating him upstairs but is coming in loud and clear through the walkie talkie which has mysteriously reappeared. In the den, Niall is furious with Harry. Liam and River sit in the kitchen eating dinner, listening to these two very similar arguments play out on different sides of the house.   
  
Underneath it all, Eleanor is really angry at Louis because she’s still not pregnant, and Niall is angry at Harry for having sex with Taylor, which he probably has, or, if not, probably will. He’s definitely been thinking about it. But this is not the time or place for such thorny issues, so in their frustration they overreact to the little things, and harmony is not in the cards tonight.  
  
Liam experiences a clenching pang as he thinks of Zayn. It’s the feeling of having behaved poorly, of having hurt him. Liam would call him if he had any idea at all what he could possibly say besides “I’m sorry.”  
  
A hard rain pounds at the windows, looking for a way in.  
  
Eventually someone slams the den door and the lights in the kitchen flicker and then go out. Harry comes stomping into the dim room and opens up the freezer. He grabs an ice pack and sits down across from Liam, wincing as he presses it against his swollen hand.  
  
“Did you hit Niall?” Liam asks tentatively.  
  
“The wall.”  
  
“For a guy who punches things so often, I would think you’d know how to do it better,” River says.  
  
“I think I may have broken something.”  
  
“Besides Niall’s heart?”  
  
Harry gives River a dirty look. “Don’t you ever get tired of being the thorn in everyone’s side?”  
  
Upstairs another door slams and the lights come back on. Louis enters the kitchen wordlessly and he leans back against the fridge and closes his eyes for a second.  
  
“I have to get out of here,” Louis says, and heads for the door.  
  
Harry gets to his feet. “I’ll go with.”  
  
“Lucky me,” Louis says, disappearing into the front hall.  
  
“Asshole,” Harry says. He fumbles for his car keys. “Okay, then. Have a good night, everyone.”  
  
“Wait!” Liam says, following him out to the front hall, River hot on his heels, where Louis is already halfway out the door. “What about the shiva?”  
  
They look into the living room at the five empty shiva chairs lined up in front of the fireplace. “You’ll be fine,” Louis says. “Just nod and smile.”  
  
“You’re not leaving us here.” River says.  
  
Harry flips a cigarette into his mouth and leans into the shiva candle to light it, which strikes Liam as somewhat sacrilegious, but he guesses their father wouldn’t mind. “It’s like a monsoon out there right now. I bet no one will even come tonight. So why don’t you two come with?”  
  
“What if people come?” Liam says.  
  
Harry grabs a legal pad and pen from a compartment in the hall table and draws up a quick sign:   
  
_Shiva canceled on account of rain. Try again tomorrow. —The Management.  
  
_ He jams the paper under the knocker on the front door. “Problem solved,” he says.  
  
  
 ** _9:15 pm  
  
  
_** Cowell’s is in one of the last strip malls before you get to the “bad” part of town, just about a mile down the road from the Marriott where Sophia is staying. Or was staying. She is no doubt gone by now.  
  
Cowell’s. Famous for its jalapeno poppers and sexy waitresses in their tight black T-shirts. The place is filled with women in short skirts or jeans, and tight sleeveless shirts.  
  
“Boys’ night out,” Harry says appreciatively. “Why don’t we do this more?”  
  
“Because we don’t like each other very much,” River says.  
  
“That’s crap, River. You’re too cynical to know who you like and who you don’t. I like you, River. I love you. All three of you. I was always too young to go anywhere with you guys. I always wished we’d hung out more as brothers.”  
  
“Well then, this must be a big moment for you.” Louis says.  
  
 _“The boys are back in town,”_ Harry sings.  
  
A waitress comes to bring their drinks. “Hey, Harry,” she says. “How’ve you been?”  
  
“Hey, Danielle. Looking good.”  
  
“Is there anyone in this town you haven’t fucked?” Louis grumbles.  
  
“Just because she was glad to see me doesn’t mean I fucked her.”  
  
“So you didn’t?”  
  
Harry shrugs. “It’s not a fair test case. Everyone fucked Danielle Peazer.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Liam says.  
  
“The night’s young. Just be charming and tip well.”  
  
Louis slams a dollar bill down on the table. “I’d like to perform a demonstration,” he says. “Harold. Please go over to the jukebox and choose a song.”  
  
“You get two for a dollar.”  
  
“Then go crazy.”  
  
“Anything in particular you’re in the mood for?”  
  
“Surprise me.”  
  
Harry hops off his stool and makes his way across the crowded room. “Watch,” Louis says.  
  
“What?” River asks.  
  
“He won’t be able to get there and back without touching at least three people.”  
  
There’s a girl at the jukebox, in a little black halter top, her jeans doing that thing where they ride low on her hips. He leans over and whispers something to her. She looks up at him and laughs. And then she teeters a little bit. She grabs Harry’s arm to right herself. It’s simple, effortless even. Her fingers continue to clutch his elbow as they chat. How does a simple wisecrack turn into bodily contact?  
  
On his way back he is stopped by two guys who seem to know him. He leans in to accept a kiss from each one, his hands resting lightly on their hips, just above the waist of their jeans, as he chats briefly.   
  
He’s about ten feet away from us when he bumps into another girl, graciously guiding her past him with his hand on the small of her back as they trade smiles.  
  
“Four,” Louis says.  
  
“Four what?” Harry says.  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
Harry looks mildly irked and then shrugs. He takes a generous swig of beer. “So, Lou. I think it’s great you and Eleanor want to have a kid.”  
  
Louis looks up at him and then down at the dwindling foam of his pint. “She’s driving me crazy with it. We’ve burned through our savings on her quest for fertility.”  
  
“I find it interesting that you call it ‘her’ quest and not ‘our’ quest.”  
  
“And I find it interesting that you’re sleeping with god knows how many people while you’re engaged to someone else, but I figure that’s your own business.”  
  
Harry puts down his beer, looking hurt. “You’re an asshole, Louis. You’re an asshole to me; you’re an asshole to River. I hope to hell you turn out to be a better father than you are a brother.”  
  
“I’m the lousy brother?” Louis says, raising his voice. “You think it was just Pop who paid to keep you out of jail when you decided to take up marijuana farming? I didn’t take profits for three years so that we could pay off your legal fees. And, River? Don’t get me started on you.”   
  
“No need,” River says, waving him off. “I know all about your great sacrifice. You’ll never let me forget it.”  
  
“What did you just say to me?” Louis says, getting to his feet. His stool clatters to the floor behind him.  
  
River stands up to face him. “It was your own damn fault, Louis. You _chose_ to take over the store. I kept telling you, you didn’t have to that the store practically runs itself, but you were going to show everyone what a good son you were. I didn’t ask you to do it, and I’m sick and tired of paying for it.”  
  
“I think we should all just take a beat here,” Liam says, but it’s too late.  
  
Louis brings his beer mug crashing down on the table. He is seething now, his face red, his fists clenched. Around them, people move away quickly, anticipating a brawl. “I gave up my scholarship. I gave up everything. You went off to live your life and never looked back.” He sinks his teeth into every word, and they come out chewed. “And now you want to tell me that you paid a price? You ungrateful prick!”  
  
“You could have stayed at uni. You chose to move home and take over the family business. Should I have done that with you, pissed away my future?”  
  
“Okay, this is good. We’re all talking here, getting everything out on the table.” Harry.  
  
“Shut up, Harry!” River and Louis shout in unison.  
  
The bouncer is suddenly standing behind Louis, giving them a hard look. He’s a retired boxer. There are framed clippings of his fights behind the bar. It’s anyone’s guess what kind of punch the guy might pack today, but he’s got presence, and his expression carries a certain tired wisdom unique to people who have known violence intimately. He places a hand on Louis’ shoulder.   
  
“Louis,” he says in a hoarse, surprisingly gentle voice. “You either need to sit down or take this outside.”  
  
Louis nods, still looking at River, and then pats the bouncer’s belly. “It’s fine, Mark. I’m leaving anyway.”  
  
Mark looks pointedly at River, Harry and then Liam, visualizing the cataclysmic damage he’ll do to them if it comes to that, before heading back across the bar. Louis throws a few bills down on the table.  
  
“We’re leaving,” he says and starts heading for the door.


	7. Day 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> [ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/gho4life/media/Day6_zps622404a5.jpg.html)   
> 

**_6:45 am_**  
  
  
Liam climbs up onto the roof and finds Niall already there, smoking one of River’s cigarettes. He turns around, surprised, and then offers him a weak smile.   
  
“Did I take your spot?”   
  
“It’s fine,” he says, crawling out to sit next to Niall.   
  
“Always room for one more.”   
  
He offers Liam the pack. He takes one and lights it. Then they sit there for a little while, staring out over the rooftops.  
  
Niall turns to look at Liam. “Harry has been sleeping with that girl, Taylor, hasn’t he?” There’s no anger in his voice, just sad resignation.  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“But if you had to guess.”  
  
“He’s my brother, Niall.”  
  
“I understand.” He takes a slow, tentative drag on the cigarette. Smoking doesn’t come naturally to him. “I’m all alone here, Liam. I need a friend, someone to tell me if I’m crazy or not. Between you and me and the sunrise.”   
  
Liam looks at Niall for a long time. “Between you, me, and the sunrise,” he says.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I don’t know for a fact that he slept with her. But I know he feels something for you.”  
  
The tears slide quietly down Niall’s cheeks and he wraps his arms around his knees. “Thank you.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That I can’t be more help.”  
  
Niall wipes his eyes and exhales slowly. “It’s my own damn fault, really. Whatever lies he may have told me, they pale in comparison to the lies I’ve been telling myself.”  
  
“You deserve better than the way he’s treated you this week. I love him, but that’s the truth.”  
  
He smiles a little and turns his face up to the sky. “He really does love me. In his heart, he wants to be the man I need.”  
  
“So, what are you going to do?”  
  
He thinks about it for a moment and then shrugs. “I’ll wait until the shiva ends. That seems only right. Then I’ll gather up the tattered remnants of my dignity and say good-bye.”  
  
“He’ll be crushed. You know that, right?”  
  
“I’ll let him keep the Porsche.”  
  
“Wow,” Liam says. “Parting gifts.”  
  
“He meant well. I just don’t have time for anger anymore.”  
  
“You may be the best person I’ve ever known.”  
  
Niall smiles and pats Liam’s knee. “I talk a big game.”  
  
“Where were you when my life was going to shit?”  
  
“I’m always available.” He fumbles around in his pockets and comes up with an embossed business card. It says his name, followed by a slew of acronyms. Below that it says board-certified therapist, and below that it says life coach. And right below that, in boldfaced type, it says this: have a plan.  
  
“Have a plan,” Liam says.   
  
“Do you?”  
  
“Whatever the opposite of a plan is, that’s what I’ve got.”  
  
“Can I offer you a piece of unsolicited advice?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
Niall turns to face Liam. “You’re terrified of being alone. Anything you do now will be motivated by that fear. You have to stop worrying about finding love again. It will come when it comes. Get comfortable with being alone. It’s empowering.”  
  
“In what way?”  
  
“Be the man you want to be. And then you’ll be ready to make a plan.”  
  
“Being alone isn’t for everybody,” Liam says.  
  
  
 ** _10:10 am  
  
  
_** According to the pamphlet Woody left on the piano, this is the last full day of shiva. Tomorrow morning he will come and lead the family in a small closing ceremony, snuff out the shiva candle, and then they’ll part ways, back to the flaming wrecks of their individual lives. In Liam’s case, he has no idea what that even means.   
  
None of the Kinlans make eye contact. They have pretty much had it with each other. They are angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.  
  
Charlotte runs three weekly postpartum support groups in her living room, where young mothers come to share tips on colic remedies and toilet training while venting their frustration about lack of sleep, worthless husbands, and how the last bits of pregnancy fat have taken up permanent residency in their asses.   
  
When they were kids, the Kinlan boys called these women the Sad Mommies and viewed them with a mixture of awe and pity, spying from the top rungs of the staircase to watch actual grown-ups cry. Some of those ladies could really wail, in a way that sent them scurrying back to their bedrooms to laugh hysterically into their pillows.  
  
Today, through a phone chain, or, more likely, through a Sad Mommies e-mail distribution, a number of them have all arranged to come pay their respects at the same time. This happens a lot. People form shiva alliances, arriving together to eliminate the risk of a one-on-one with the bereaved. Some of the Sad Mommies sit with infants strapped to their chests in little knapsacks, vibrating unconsciously in their seats to keep the kids asleep.  
  
“Don’t rock them,” Charlotte insists hoarsely. “You rock them now; you’ll be rocking them for the next four years. You’re robbing them of their natural ability to put themselves to sleep.” This is why they pay her the big bucks.  
  
“Did you rock us?” River asks.  
  
“Just you,” Charlotte says. “I learned the hard way. The rest of you learned to put yourselves to sleep.”  
  
“I’d like to go practice right now,” Harry says, resting his head on Louis shoulder. Louis shrugs it off maybe a little more violently than he probably meant to, and Harry practically falls off his chair.  
  
“What the hell?” he demands under his breath.  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
There are seven mothers, three of whom have left their babies home with the help. They are making a day of it. Brunch, shiva call, pedicures, and then a quick trip to the mall.  
  
“Good for you,” Charlotte says. “Any excuse to take care of yourself is a good one.”  
  
An ad hoc therapy session breaks out. Louis, River, Liam, and Harry listen in amazement as the women speak of all the injustices they endure, the sacrifices they make. Charlotte eggs them on, offers suggestions, wisdom, and absolution, which, when you get right down to it, is what they’re really paying for. Among Charlotte’s gems:   
  
“Children crave discipline.”  
  
“Don’t shield your child from anger; this business of saying ‘Mommy is sad’ when you’re angry is just a bunch of new age crap. If he pissed you off, let him know it.”  
  
“One way or another, start having orgasms again. Restore your balance as a woman.”  
  
“Love them to pieces, but demand their respect.”  
  
The Sad Mommies share stories and offer harried grins, looking tired and put-upon as they discuss their marriages. One of them, bone-thin with the sad eyes of a puppy, says, “Having kids changes everything.”  
  
“Not having kids changes everything too,” Liam says. The mommies look at him with guarded respect, as if he’s just said something complex and profound. Charlotte beams and nods, proud of her emotionally damaged son.  
  
A blond mommy with dark roots and a floral skirt casually unbuttons her blouse and unsheathes a breast to feed her baby. Her belligerent gaze darts around the room like sonar, daring anyone to have a problem with it.  
  
“That was once a tit,” Louis mutters.  
  
River smacks the back of his head, but without any real conviction.  
  
  
 ** _11:30 am_**  
  
  
Say what you will about the Sad Mommies, but they don’t overstay their welcome. They have schedules to keep, nap times and feedings to coordinate, manicure/pedicure appointments, and grocery shopping to get done.  
  
A number of the regulars are back, women mostly, friends and neighbors who have to have their morning coffee somewhere, and those husbands who are retired. Mr. Grimsby is back again, and you have to admire his tenacity. He’s playing it a bit cooler this time, but he watches Charlotte intently, waiting for the right moment to pounce.  
  
Nick Grimshaw comes by to bring Louis some papers he requested. He takes a seat in front of River to talk to him. They run out of conversation pretty quickly, self-conscious around the rest of the family, but he makes no move to leave, and River seems happy to have him there.  
  
The women are talking about a dangerous intersection in town. There’s a short light and no left-turn lane, and there was another crash there just last week. Someone should do something about it. This leads to car crash stories, to speeding tickets, to the Mills’ lawsuit against the city over the maple tree that fell through their roof in the last rainstorm, to the McMansions that are being built around the neighborhood in defiance of the zoning laws, to the courthouse. The conversation unfurls through endless random topics, never lingering for very long on any one subject.  
  
And it is right in the middle of this that Charlotte suddenly stands up and looks over the crowd of visitors toward the front hall. Her boys follow her gaze to see Jade closing the front door behind her, rubbing her shoes vigorously on the mat. Charlotte’s smile is small and tentative, completely out of character for her. Jade looks up at Charlotte and grins a wry apology. Charlotte moves through the chairs, picking up speed as she goes, hits the hall at a slow jog, and runs into Jade’s arms. They embrace fiercely for a moment and then press their foreheads together, whispering to each other, tears flowing. Charlotte takes Jade’s face in her hands and, with great tenderness, plants a soft, lingering kiss on her mouth. Then she takes her by the arm and they walk out the front door, leaving the rest of her family to figure out how to breathe in a room in which the oxygen supply has suddenly, inexplicably been depleted.  
  
Mr. Grimsby is the first to react. He clears his throat and rises to his feet. “Well,” he says. “That was unexpected.”  
  
  
 ** _12:00 pm  
  
  
_** You can see your parents have sex, you can see your girlfriend in bed with your professor, and still, none of it packs quite the same surreal punch as seeing your mother kiss another woman. River ushers out the shiva callers— _“Thank you all for coming. We hope to see you again under happier circumstances”_ —while Harry handles the stragglers and those who can’t quite take a hint somewhat less tactfully: _“Okay there, Mr. and Mrs. Sheeran. Don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you.”  
  
_ And then it is just them, River, Harry, Louis, Nick, Eleanor, Niall, and Liam, sitting in the living room, coming to terms with the new reality.  
  
Louis opens the discussion. “What the fuck?”  
  
“You didn’t know?” Liam.  
  
“What do you mean? You did?”  
  
“We had our suspicions.” River.  
  
“So Mom’s a lesbian now? Cool.” Harry.  
  
“Don’t trivialize it,” Niall says. “That was actually a very moving thing to witness.”  
  
“She can’t be a lesbian,” Louis says. “She was married for forty years.”  
  
“Well, it’s a little late in life for her experimental phase, don’t you think?” River.  
  
“I think they prefer the term ‘bisexual,’ ” Nick says.  
  
Everyone turns to look at him.  
  
“And you know this because…?” Louis says.  
  
Nick shrugs, blushing slightly.  
  
“How long?” River demands.  
  
“How long is a Chinaman?” Harry says, mechanically repeating an old childhood joke.  
  
“Run and play, Harold, the adults are talking,” River says. “How long, Grimmy?”  
  
“I don’t really know.”  
  
“Ballpark it.”  
  
“I think they should tell you themselves.”  
  
“Holy shit!” Louis says. “Mum is a lesbian.”  
  
“A bisexual.”  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
“I think it’s wonderful,” Eleanor says. “I mean, they’ve been best friends since forever. What a deep bond they must have.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, El! My father’s body is still warm!” Louis shakes his head. “Am I the only one who is having a problem with this?”  
  
“A problem is something to solve,” Harry says. “If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.”  
  
Everyone turns to look at Harry.  
  
“That actually almost makes sense,” River says.  
  
“It’s something I learned from Niall,” Harry says. “Isn’t he something?”   
  
He leans forward to kiss Niall, and he turns away from his kiss.  
  
“What’s wrong, baby?”  
  
“Not here.”  
  
“I just complimented you. What are you getting all pissy about?”  
  
“I said not here.”  
  
“And I said, what are you getting all pissy about?”  
  
“This isn’t the appropriate time or place.”  
  
“My mother just stuck her tongue down her best friend’s throat in front of her children and half the neighborhood. In case you’ve missed it, we don’t really do appropriate here.”  
  
“I’m leaving,” Niall says, getting to his feet.  
  
“Since when do you walk away from a discussion? You live for discussions. That’s all you ever want to do is discuss the shit out of everything.”  
  
Niall looks down at him and shakes his head slowly. “You are such an asshole.” Then he turns and heads upstairs.  
  
“But I’m engaging here, honey!” he calls angrily after him. “I’m taking ownership of my feelings.” Harry watches Niall go, then shrugs and turns back to them. “Don’t ever date a shrink,” he grumbles. “It’s like trying to read Chinese.”  
  
  
 ** _6:25 pm  
  
  
_** Harry is up on the roof. Not on the wide area they sometimes sit on, but on the topmost gable above the attic. There’s a black Town Car parked in the driveway, its trunk open. A portly driver in a black suit leans against the car having a smoke. Liam jogs out of the house and joins Louis, Eleanor, Nick, and River at the edge of the lawn. Niall stands in the middle of the lawn, looking up at Harry.  
  
“Please get down!” Niall calls up to him. “You’ll kill yourself!”  
  
“That’s the general idea,” Harry shouts back. He stands up, one foot on either side of the gable, and spreads his arms out for balance. “Send the limo away.”  
  
“What’s going on?” Liam says.  
  
“Harry proposed to Niall,” River says. “In front of us all.”  
  
“And what did Niall say?”  
  
River smirks at him. “Where have you been?”  
  
“I was taking a nap.”  
  
“He’s taking it like a man,” Louis says.  
  
“I swear to God, if you get in that car I’ll jump!”   
  
Niall turns to them. “You don’t think he’d really jump, do you?”  
  
River looks up at Harry and shakes his head. “Only one way to find out, I guess.”  
  
“I love you!” Harry shouts.  
  
“You’re being childish and manipulative!”  
  
“Whatever works.”  
  
Charlotte and Jade come running up from across the street. “What in the world is going on?” Jade says.  
  
“Niall’s not going to marry Harry,” Liam says.  
   
“Niall’s not a fool,” Charlotte says. She steps out onto the lawn and faces Niall. “There’s only one way to treat a Harry tantrum and that is to ignore it.”  
  
“Ignore it?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“But he’s not a four-year-old.”  
  
“Honey, we’re all four-year-olds.”  
  
Niall appears conflicted. “What if he jumps?”  
  
“Then I’ll have to rethink my thesis.”  
  
Niall looks at Charlotte for a long moment, his eyes growing wet. “You must think I’m such an idiot.”  
  
Charlotte looks at him with great tenderness. “You’re no idiot. You’re not the first person who wanted to believe in Harry.” She steps forward and pulls Niall into a warm hug.  
  
“No, but I will be the last,” Niall says.  
  
“What’s going on?” Harry shouts from above.  
  
Niall looks up to him. “I’m going to marry you, you sodding idiot, now will you get off that roof?”  
  
“I guess so.”  
  
But when he stands up to pull his leg back over the gable, his pants catch on one of the snow guards. He loses his footing and slides down the side of the roof, scrambling in vain to grab on to the slate shingles. There is time for him to gasp, “Fuck me!” as he slides down the roof and then over the gutter. He is briefly airborne, arms flailing, before landing hard in the hedges that line the side of the house.   
  
They all run around the corner of the house to find him lying flat on his back atop a crushed bush, looking up at the sky like he’s stoned.

“Harry!” Niall shouts, falling to his knees in front of him. “Don’t try to move.”  
  
“You ever notice how much closer the sky looks when you’re lying down?” he says.  
  
“Can you move your legs?” River says.  
  
“If I feel like it.” He closes his eyes for a second. “That really hurt,” he says.  
  
“I’m going to call 911,” Charlotte says.  
  
He opens his eyes and looks at her. “Mom.”  
  
“Yes, honey.”  
  
“So what, you’re like, a lesbian now?”  
  
  
 ** _7:45 pm_**  
  
  
Charlotte is ready to unload. She perches herself on one fat arm of the leather easy chair in the living room and tells them all her story. Jade sits on the other arm, for purposes of symmetry. They have clearly imagined this moment before.   
  
“It started out as something purely surreal and physical.” Charlotte speaks like she’s narrating the documentary of her bisexual awakening. “But Jade and I have been so close for so long. It was only natural that a physical relationship would evolve into something more.”  
  
“You make it all sound so perfectly normal,” Louis says.  
  
“Well, yes. That’s how it felt, I suppose.”  
  
“Except for the part where you were cheating on your dying husband.”  
  
“Lou,” Jade says.  
  
“No, it’s okay,” Charlotte says. “He knew.”  
  
“Dad knew?” Liam says.  
  
“Your father was a very enlightened man, sexually speaking.”  
  
“Our father?” Harry.  
  
“Let me tell you a story about your father.”  
  
“Please don’t.” River.  
  
Jade clears her throat. “Your father was always so good to Nick and me. He accepted us as family; he took care of our finances. When Nick’s father was killed, and I was paying for all of the funeral arrangements, your father made our mortgage payments for a full year, so we wouldn’t lose the house. I would never have betrayed him. Charlotte was the love of his life, and he died knowing she wouldn’t be alone. He told me that many times toward the end.”  
  
“So Pop was cool with it,” Harry says.  
  
“He said he’d always sensed something there,” Charlotte says.  
  
“So why didn’t you tell us?” Liam says. “You’ve always been so open about your sex life.”  
  
“I didn’t want to complicate your grief. Simon was a generous and loving husband. He was a good father to all of you. He deserved to be mourned without any distractions.”  
  
Something clicks for River. “It wasn’t Pop who wanted us to sit shiva, was it?”  
  
Charlotte blushes and looks down at her lap. “Smart boy.”  
  
There are exclamations and groans of dismay from the other three boys.  
  
“Oh, come on!” Charlotte says. “You knew how your father felt about religion. Or, rather, didn’t feel. I’m just surprised you all went along with it for so long.”  
  
“We thought it was his dying request!” Louis says. “Jesus Christ, Mum! What were you thinking?”  
  
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the four of you to stay in the same place for more than a few hours? My husband, your father, had died. I needed you. And you needed each other, even if you still don’t know it.”  
  
“Woody lied for you,” Louis says.  
  
Charlotte shrugs. “He knows where his bread is buttered.”  
  
“You lied to us,” Liam says softly.  
  
“Yes. I did.”  
  
“But you never lie to us. That’s your thing.”  
  
“I never made love to a woman either,” Charlotte says proudly. “People can change. Not often, and not often for the better, but it does happen.”   
  
Charlotte, it should be pointed out, is loving this. Her children are shocked and mortified and hanging on her every word. It’s their childhood in a nutshell. It’s like they never left.  
  
Harry rolls off the couch, wincing in pain as he does, and stands up. “Okay. I forgive you for your lying and your treachery.”   
  
He walks over to Charlotte and Jade pulling them into a group hug. “I’m happy for you guys.” Then he collapses onto the chair between them. “Anyone have any codeine? I think I’m bleeding internally.”  
  
  
 ** _8:47 pm_**  
  
  
“It feels like the last day of camp,” River says. He and Liam are sitting on the front porch swing, sharing a glass of wine. “Tomorrow we all go our separate ways.”  
  
“And what about Erik?”  
  
“What about him?”  
  
“Nothing. Never mind.”  
  
River sighs, his face a complex mixture of love and pain and fear.   
  
“I have a very nice life, with a good man,” River says. “I love him for who he is. Sometimes who he is isn’t enough for me, but most of the time, it is. There are people who would leave to find something better. I envy them, but I also know I’m not one of them. And how many of those people truly end up with a better man?” He shrugs. “No studies have been done.”  
  
“And Grimmy?”   
  
“There is no Grimmy. Nick Grimshaw is a fantasy. And that’s all I am to him. Time travel. We slept together as a favor to the kids we once were, not because there’s really anything there besides history and some completely useless love.”  
  
He gets off the swing and goes into the house. River taught Liam to curse, matched his clothing, brushed his hair before school, and let Liam sleep in bed with him when bad dreams woke the boy up.   
  
He fell in love often, and with great fanfare, throwing himself into each romance with the focus of an Olympic athlete. Now he’s an executive, and a husband, and calls romantic love useless.   
  
Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why the Kinlans all stay away from each other as a matter of course.  
  
  
 ** _8:55 pm_**  
  
  
Liam goes down the basement stairs to find Harry sitting on his bed, holding his duffel bag full of cash. “This is a lot of money,” he says.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Can I have some?”  
  
“Define ‘some.’”  
  
Harry thinks about it for a moment. “A grand?”  
  
“Are you going to gamble it?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Are you going to buy drugs?”  
  
“Jesus, Liam.” He tosses the bag onto the floor and heads for the stairs. “Forget I asked.”  
  
“Harry.”  
  
He turns around. “I’m trying here, Li. I’m just looking for a fresh start here with Niall, without him footing the bill for everything. The plan was to work with Louis, but he’s being a real dick about it.”  
  
“Well, maybe you have to work for him for a while, before you work with him.”  
  
He thinks about it for a moment and then hoists himself up to sit on the Ping-Pong table. “I could probably be persuaded to do that.”  
  
“I’ll talk to Louis,” Liam says.  
  
“Yeah, because you guys are tight like that.”  
  
“People can change.”  
  
Harry laughs and sits back down on the bed. “It’s been nice here, this last week, being brothers again.”  
  
“We never stopped being brothers.”  
  
“It felt like we did.”  
  
“Yeah. I guess it did.”  
  
Harry pulls himself off the Ping-Pong table and heads for the stairs. “Well, I’ll let you get some sleep.”  
  
“Harry.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Take a grand.” Sixteen grand in a shopping bag feels like much more than sixteen grand in the bank.  
  
“Thanks, man.” He starts up the stairs.  
  
“I’m serious. Come take it.”  
  
Harry grins and pats the back pocket of his jeans, which Liam now sees has a slight rectangular bulge. “Way ahead of you, big brother.”  
  
  
 ** _9:40 pm  
  
  
_** Zayn opens the door brushing his teeth, dressed in sweats and a tank top.   
  
“Hey,” Liam says.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
“I hope it’s not too late.”  
  
“Too late for what?”  
  
“Right. Um… Well, for an apology, first of all.”  
  
Zayn looks at him like he’s peering through fog. Liam catches a glimpse of Zayn’s lonely, cluttered apartment behind him. It feels like its Liam’s fault.  
  
“It’s not too late,” Zayn says.  
  
“I’m glad.”  
  
“Was that it?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Was that your apology? I wasn’t sure. Sometimes people say ‘I want to apologize,’ and then that’s supposed to be their apology, when in fact, by saying they want to apologize, they manage to avoid the actual apology.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
He shrugs. “I’ve been apologized to a lot.”  
  
“Zayn.”  
  
“Is there something you want to say to me, Liam? Then just say it. You’ll never have a less threatening audience.”  
  
“I didn’t really think it out,” Liam says. “I just came.”  
  
“Well, there’s no danger of sounding too rehearsed then.”  
  
There’s a small chunk of toothpaste lodged in the corner of his mouth. Liam reaches forward and rubs it off.  
  
“I’m really very sorry for making a mess of things between us.”  
  
Zayn shakes his head. “That’s not what you’re sorry for.”  
  
“It’s not?”  
  
“You’re sorry for not telling me that Sophia was pregnant. That you were terribly conflicted about it, that you’re afraid you’re still in love with her, and that you were probably the worst possible guy for me to climb into bed with.”  
  
“Yes. I’m very sorry about that. Ashamed, really. It took me ten minutes to work up the nerve to ring your buzzer.”   
  
“I know. I was watching from the window.”  
  
“I really am sorry. You deserved better.”  
  
“I forgive you.”  
  
“Really? Just like that?”  
  
“Yes, just like that.”  
  
“You still sound angry.”  
  
“I sound distant. Because I am. Because as much as I appreciate your coming over here, I have spent the last day building a big old wall between you and me, and I’m going to stay back here on my side of it.”  
  
“I guess I understand that.”  
  
“It’s nothing personal.”  
  
They stand there in silence for a moment. Liam doesn’t know what he expected.  
  
“So, the shiva is over?”  
  
“Yeah. I guess. Tomorrow morning.”  
  
“Then what?”  
  
Liam shakes his head. “I don’t really know.”  
  
“Well, there’s no law against taking your time to figure it out.”  
  
“I guess not.”  
  
“Baby steps,” Zayn says, and then grins joylessly. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”  
  
“It’s okay.”  
  
“Well,” Zayn says. “We’re back to awkward again, and you know I don’t do awkward. So I’m going to give you a hug…” He steps forward and hugs Liam. He is warm and light in Liam’s arms, and he is filled with a deep sense of regret as Zayn’s hair tickles his cheek. “And now you should get going.”  
  
“Goodbye, Zayn. I hope I see you again.”  
  
His smile is at half strength but somehow genuine. “Take care, Liam Kinlan.”  
  
  
 ** _9:55 pm  
  
  
_** Liam is walking to his car when he hears footsteps behind him. “Liam.”  
  
Liam turns around and Zayn launches himself into his arms, becoming airborne just before impact, squeezing the breath out of Liam. Zayn’s legs wrap around him, and he holds him there. When Zayn pulls back, he is smiling brightly through tears. “I was never good at walls,” he says.  
  
“No you weren’t.”  
  
“I want you to know that I’m always gonna love you.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. Even if you come up with a better plan for your life. It’s always gonna be you and me, babe.”  
  
Liam nods. “You and me.”  
  
“You good with that?”  
  
“I’m good with that.”   
  
And then, because they are lit like a movie in the glow of the street light, and because at that moment Liam loves Zayn as much as he’s ever loved anyone, Liam pulls Zayn into him and kisses Zayn. When Zayn opens his mouth, Liam can taste the toothpaste on his tongue.  
  
“Minty fresh,” Liam says.  
  
Zayn laughs like the tolling of bells, the kind of laugh that can make a man feel just a little more whole.


	8. Day 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> [ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/gho4life/media/Day7_zps39389d56.jpg.html)   
> 

****_8:00 am_  
  
  
Woody comes over to officially end the shiva. He doesn’t look terribly happy to be seeing any of the Kinlan’s again. In the week they’ve been there, they’ve trashed his temple, and resurrected his embarrassing nickname. He asks all of the immediate mourners to sit down in the low chairs one last time. Once he has them all seated, he sits down on one of the folding chairs and speaks as if he’s reading from a script.  
  
“For the last week, this has been a house of mourning,” he says. “You’ve taken solace from each other, and from the community. Of course, your grief doesn’t end with the shiva. In fact, the harder part is ahead: going back to your regular lives, to a world without your husband and father. And just as you have comforted each other here this week, you must continue to look in on each other, especially your mother, to talk about Simon, to keep his memory alive, to know you’re not alone.”

Woody stands. “The following two passages are from the book of Isaiah: _‘No more will your sun set, nor your moon be darkened, for God will be an eternal light for you and your days of mourning shall end. Like a man whose mother consoles him, so shall I console you, and you shall be consoled in Jerusalem.’_ ”

“It would be so nice to believe in God,” Harry murmurs to no one in particular.  
  
They all look at Woody expectantly, like graduates waiting to throw their caps.  
  
“Now,” he says, grinning away the formality. “Please stand up.”  
  
The Kinlans all stand up, and the shiva is over. They are glad that it’s over but sorry to see it go. They love each other but can’t handle being around each other for very long. It’s a small miracle they made it through these seven days intact. And even now, they smile at each other, but their smiles are awkward and eye contact is fleeting. Already, they are coming apart again.  
  
“It’s now customary for all of the immediate family to leave the house together,” Woody says.  
  
“And go where?” Louis.  
  
“Just take a walk around the block.”  
  
“What for?” Liam.  
  
“For the last seven days, you have been apart from the world, focusing on death. Taking a walk outside reestablishes your connection to the living.”  
  
“So, just walk around the block?”  
  
“Yes,” Woody says, annoyed. “That would be great.”  
  
It’s cooler than expected outside, bright and blustery, the first winds of autumn whispering through the leaves. Charlotte walks between Harry and River, lacing her arms through theirs, adding a procession-like quality to the stroll. Louis and Liam fall awkwardly into step behind them, their hands jammed into their pockets for warmth.  
  
“So,” Louis says. “What’s next for you?”  
  
“I don’t really know.”  
  
“Well, if there’s anything I can do…” His voice trails off.  
  
Liam keeps his eyes straight ahead. “What about Haz?”  
  
“What about him?”  
  
“He needs a job.”  
  
“You need a job.”  
  
“I need a lot of things big brother.”  
  
River falls back, sliding between his two brothers. Liam jogs ahead to join their mother and Harry.  
  
“I’ll sign over my share if you hire Harry.”  
  
Louis looks sharply at him and then sighs. “I’m pretty sure Harry hasn’t screwed up his life for the last time.”  
  
“You’re probably right.”  
  
They walk in silence for a bit. River kicks a small stone ahead of them. When they reach it, Louis kicks it, keeping it in play. “Pop always had a soft spot for him, didn’t he?”  
  
River nods. “He was everything Dad wasn’t.”  
  
“Crazy, you mean.”  
  
“Loud. Warm. Emotional. Dad liked us because we were kind of like him, and he liked Harry because he wasn’t anything like him.”  
  
Louis sighs. “So what are we talking about here?”  
  
“Dad’s gone,” River says. “And along with the business, we inherit the business of bailing out Harry.”  
  
Louis kicks the rock a little too hard, and it clatters off the sidewalk and into the street. “Okay. Here’s the deal. You keep your share. I’ll bring Harry into the business on a trial basis. But when it comes to him screwing up, you and I are partners. Fifty-fifty. Deal?”  
  
“Deal,” River says.  
  
Louis stops walking and clears his throat. “I want to say something else.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“What happened the other night. I said some things.”  
  
“We both did.”  
  
“Yeah, well, the point is, I’ve been pissed at you for a very long time and that didn’t do either of us any good. I wasted a lot of time being angry, time I can’t get back.”  
  
“I hear you. Thanks.”  
  
Louis slaps his back and starts walking again, a step ahead of River. As far as reconciliations go, it’s awkward and vague, but the advantage to being as emotionally inarticulate as the Kinlan boys are is that it will do the trick.   
  
So they walk on, lighter than when they left, the click of Charlotte’s stiletto heels beating out a Morse code on the pavement as she leads them back home.  
  
  
 ** _9:15 am  
  
  
_** Charlotte cries when she kisses River goodbye. She can be so over the top as a matter of routine that when normal emotions come into play, it almost feels unreal. But they are her children, and they’re all leaving her again.  
  
River hugs Liam. “He’s the one for you, y’know?” he says. “Forget about Sophia and everything attached to her. Get your man, Li.”  
  
“Have a safe trip.”  
  
“You’re a wuss, Liam James. But I love you.” He kisses Liam on the cheek gruffly and then moves on to Harry and Niall, then Louis and Eleanor, and then climbs into the back of a waiting town car. As the car drives down the street, Liam sees Grimmy standing on his porch, raising one still hand in farewell. The car lurches to a stop in front of his house, and Nick comes down the stairs.   
  
The windows are tinted and don’t open. Grimmy puts his hand on the glass, peering intently in. No one can see inside the car, but Liam imagines River placing his hand on the glass, lining his fingers up with Nick’s for a long moment, before leaning back and telling the driver to floor it, because he has a flight to catch.  
  
  
 ** _9:45 am  
  
  
_** Charlotte, Harry, Niall, Louis, Eleanor, and Grimmy are at the table, eating a lavish brunch comprised of shiva leftovers. Harry is telling a story that has them alternately gasping and laughing. He has many stories that can do that, and some of them might even be true.   
  
Liam watches them for a moment, unseen from the hallway, and then steps quietly down the hall to the front door. For reasons he doesn’t fully understand, being at the center of another tangle of goodbye hugs and well-wishes is more than he can handle right now.  
  
“Making your escape, I see.”  
  
Liam turns to see Jade, standing at the foot of the stairs, watching him.  
  
“No. I was just—”  
  
“It’s okay,” she says softly. “Seven days is a lot of togetherness. Come give me a hug.” She wraps her arms around Liam and kisses him once on each cheek.  
  
“I’m happy for you and Mum,” he says.  
  
“Really? It’s not too weird for you?” She blushes a little, looking younger and suddenly vulnerable, and Liam can see her a little the way Charlotte does.  
  
“It’s a good weird.”  
  
“That was a perfect way to describe it,” she says, hugging him again. “Thank you.”  
  
“So, are you going to move in?”  
  
“We’ll see,” she says, offering up a small, wry smile. “We’re taking it very slow. Your mum hasn’t dated in such a long time. This is all very new to her.”  
  
“I would imagine it is.”  
  
“Oh. Well, yes, that too.” She looks him over fondly, appraising Liam. “You look better than when you first got here.” She grins. “Don’t be a stranger, Liam.”  
  
“I won’t.”  
  
  
 **** _10:00 am  
  
  
_ Liam sits idling in a petrol station just before the motorway junction, drawing maps in his head. He can be at the skating complex in ten minutes. He can be back at his university in ninety. According to the GPS, he could be in Wales in three hours and seven minutes.   
  
Liam’s jeep doesn’t have GPS, but Harry’s Porsche does, and that’s what he’s driving. He left him a note with the keys to his car. This morning, on a hunch, Liam counted the money in his bag and found it light two grand, not one, so he figures a little collateral is in order.  
  
Zayn. Sophia. Wales. None of the above. There are options.  
  
Liam wants very badly to be in love again, which is why he’s in no position to look for it. But he hopes he’ll know it when it comes.   
  
He pulls onto the motorway, grinding the transmission once or twice on the way to fourth. Their father made them all learn on a manual, his massive forearms flexing as he worked the stick. _Clutch, shift, up, gas. Clutch, shift, up, gas._ Liam hears him in his head and smiles.   
  
The Kinlan boys can all drive stick. They can all change a flat. They can all repress their feelings until they poison them. It’s a complicated legacy.  
  
Liam’s not a fan of country music, but there’s no better music to drive to. Turn the right song up loud enough on the Porsche’s sound system and it will swallow you whole. The past is prelude and the future is a black hole, but right now, Liam has to say, it feels pretty good to be him.   
  
Tonight he’ll sleep in Wales. Tomorrow is anybody’s guess. He’s got a borrowed Porsche and fourteen grand in a shopping bag.  
  
Anything can happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End? I haven't decided if this is the end of this story or not, so I've given myself the option of doing an epilogue or maybe not. We'll see.


End file.
